The question of the day...

[Magdalena]

Ok, have been asked constantly recently when we're doing instance X... mostly by some of our newer players so figuring i needed to put an update here on how our group runs for those that were not here before the Alliance with KoA.

First, we will be trying what we can Fridays and Saturdays depending on how many people show up etc. Second, we're not very big on scheduling more raids than that. Reason for this is burnout... look at some of the end game raiding guilds and look at the burnout speed of players.

As one of our leaders, I for one do not want the burnout syndrome to happen to us, so I don't see 4-5 nights a week of raiding in our future. If you're looking for this you've pretty much come to the wrong group.

Does this mean you can't get a group going other nights? By no means... if there's a large group on say you're sending out invites to see how many want to go do a 10-20 man or pvp or whatever you're wanting to do, but don't press the issue with those that don't want to. Or even round up a 5-man, whatever the case may be... there are people online who enjoy many aspects of the game on other nights of the week.

Raid times are voted on by all members... Friday night's was selected for 7pm, the time for Saturdays ends today. These will be the only full guild run raid nights. If we have enough we'll do ony/mc, if we don't we'll likely shoot for aq20. Once we get the group through most of these we'll start looking at maybe changing to trying bwl on of those nights, but won't add extra nights for it.

Once GEM is back online, I will go back to scheduling and doing invites from there for Friday/Saturday.

Hope this clarifies somewhat... I'm not upset on this one, just tired of repeating the same answer to the same question over and over again

[lili]

Like mel said, if you want to do an instance on a week night get GEM and post it up. If you jusst get on line and ask, chances are that you will miss people. Easiest way to organize a instance/raid for the weeknight is though GEM.

PS: the friday night and saturday night MC runs are posted on GEM, and to get GEM, just go to the UI's sticky.

[Aoiren]

That being said I would like see if we could do a AQ or ZG run tonight.
I am going to load up GEM today, but I wanted to get the ball rolling.

I would not mind running lead on either to give Jack some more time to rest-up for the MC raid on Friday.

If we do not have enough people tonight for a 20 run, I would be up for any 5 or 10 instance that anyone would like to do.

[Magdalena]

Mike, feel free to put any runs you'd like to feel out for interest up into GEM. There's no limitation to who can set something up there which is part of the beauty of it. Everybody just has to be willing to use it for it to be effective.

Something that seems to have passed some people by is that the success or failure of this guild does not lie heavily in the officers. Anybody can organize these during the week that wants to, and if one wasn't started when you wanted it, you have nobody to blame but yourself for not putting it up there.

This doesn't just go for raids, it goes for all aspects of the guild. Putting all weight on the shoulders of a few will cause any guild to fail eventually. Taking issues behind closed doors instead of dealing with them and working them out together will cause any guild to fail eventually. Officers are here to help in bringing things forward and working through problems, but in the end whether or not it's done depends on every single member of this group. As long as we all contribute and work towards things together, we can not fail.

We have guild meetings for discussions, we have votes for decisions, we have forums in which to discuss problems, and we have utilities in which to organize ourselves. If everyone doesn't use these outlets and tools though, they do not work to accurately reflect the direction the group wishes to take and create an opportunity for failure.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I have watched what happened to our brothers in SSX-Outland, and our friends in STNY, and with heavy heart it saddens me to say that if we don't keep by our standards and basis of friendship and work together, one day this might be us as well. I know it is difficult for most to imagine this happening to us because of how close we all are, but I'm betting if you'd asked either of those at the start of raiding, or even a couple of weeks or months before the explosions happened, they were both the same as us. They didn't think it could happen to them either, but it did. I know, I have talked to some of them before, during, and after. In retrospec they see signs that started long before, but they didn't see them then.

Do I think we can prevail better? ABSOFNLUTELY! Because we're better? No way, just because we have the opportunity to learn from what happened there and open our eyes to the signs and deal with them.

Signs I've personally witnessed...

Problems kept between small circles not brought out to be worked on.
Greediness over loot - with outsiders and with each other.
Speaking out and arguing when we should be working together, staying silent when we should be speaking out and discussing together.
Not using tools to help us better communicate our wishes.
Weight of all of these trying to be put on a select few rather than shared within us all.
The fact that we have weight bearers already starting to collapse under pressure.. the game is starting to lose its appeal as they are barraged with problems each and every time they log on.

Where do we start on prevention? The starting point is those with heavy weight on their shoulders posting it up on the forums for ways to lighten the load. These guys are happy to help out for the most part, but too much has been placed on them and they've been put in the middle of too many arguments or assigned too many tasks. Post where things stand for you now and what you need to happen to realistically keep going.

I'll be working on getting mine down on paper... some will have longer lists than me, some will have shorter... none are any more or less significant, they all need work.