4.39. True Colors

Gods Will Be Watching

"So, what's the status? It's been several weeks. Are you changing the line-up?"

Sir Klocker, Neps, Jungard, and Blain remained silent while I drilled Riskers in officer chat. I made a concerted effort to keep my tone in check.

"I don't really have a lot of options!" He sounded frustrated and defeated.

You have options. You just don't like any of them.

"You've been trying to get them to return to DoD?"

"Hanzo, let's face it...they're not really interested in that. At all."

"I completely understand. Not everyone is going to agree with my decisions. So, recruitment then? Perhaps replacing them is the better option?"

He sighed into the mic.

Go ahead. Say it. Tell me how this situation is completely unfair. That I did this to you. Tell me it's all my fault, while all of the officers are listening. I know you want to.

"I...can't really replace them. It's not an option for this team. We just wanna play, and we're getting things done."

"Not guild achievements," Neps and Sir Klocker both piped up, nearly in unison.

"You're getting things done," Blain added, "but they aren't relevant to DoD."

Silence lingered a moment. I took a deep breath.

"I know you're not dumb, Riskers. You know exactly what we're dealing with here. We have a 10-Man team comprised of guildies that are checked out, and non-guildies who have publicly wiped their asses with DoD. All eyes are on Herp Derp, now. ‘Why are they posting kill shots in the forums?’ ‘What’s being done about them?’. This is my life right now, Riskers."

"The people in this guild want to know why I'm still putting it up with it. And the reason is: You. You’re a good player and a good guy; you've contributed to DoD since as far back as Wrath. You know the ropes. And you've been given a raw deal, here...which sucks a lot. But I wanted to give you a fair opportunity to make it right."

Pack your bags. We're going on a guilt trip.

Riskers still had no options. He hadn't recruited, hadn't changed anyone's mind, so why were we going through this charade? Because I honestly thought he would've walked away from them, after seeing their behavior, their treatment of DoD.

I want to tell you that he did. I want to tell you that Riskers defied the gamer stereotype of cruel incivility, of unadulterated selfishness in the name of phat lewts. I want to tell you this, but I can't...because it isn't what happened. 

"Hanzo, whatever rift you and Drecca have going on, that's none of my business. I don't feel it's fair that you're putting this on me, and now I should have to deal with that. I just want to play the game and not have to worry about any of this."

"...and in any other situation, this would not be an issue. I hope you realize that. I mean, I'm really trying to make sure you do understand that. I don't think it's right for me to sit here and try to dictate who plays with who. You're right, that is none of my business. Players decide who they want to play with, not me."

Just put him out of his misery and be done with it. Quit dragging this out.

"But how this guild is treated by current and former members is my business. If I found out a group of DoD was running with a ninja-looting guild for pick-up runs in Tol Barad, do you think I would let that slide?"

"No."

"Damn right I wouldn't! We're better than that. Grouping with douchebags isn't a prerequesite to enjoying this game. So, why would I treat this situation any differently? When a few good folks like yourself are actively grouping with players openly disrespectful toward all of us?"

"To be fair, I don't think they appreciated being called parasites."

It isn't slander if it's true.

"I'll admit that announcement was a little emotional, but I hope you can see where I'm coming from. That team is using up guild resources now on every run. Guild repairs, flasks, etc...and contributing nothing in return. No achievements. No camaraderie. Nothing. Behaving like nothing is wrong at all. But we know something is wrong. Something is eating away at this guild. And we need to put it to bed, today."

Stitching the Wound

When Riskers parted ways with DoD, those in Herp Derp that bore the DoD guild tag were stripped of their Raider ranks, disallowing them from accessing any further guild resources. Within a couple of hours of the demotions, they left the guild on their own. There was no public outburst or profanity-laced insults, nor fanfare. They left quietly and without fuss. 

Later that evening, Neps informed me that Bheer managed to scoop out a healthy chunk of raiding materials from the guild vault before losing his rank.

"Drecca did the same on the Alliance side," he told me.

Wow. Stealing from Neps. Did they stop to kick an old man down a flight of stairs, too?

I questioned Neps as to whether or not he'd heard any justification for the final 'fuck you' flipped our way.

"Mmm, not sure who said it, but it was, like, ‘Well, if Hanzo's going to call us parasites, then I guess we better act like it'."

---

As so many players come and go in WoW, I doubted their departure would have an emotional impact on anyone but me. Annihilation, ever the faithful representation of DoD's idealism, took it to heart. I didn't want him to shoulder this petty load. His time was best spent elsewhere, enjoying the game, not repairing the guild leader's failed negotiations.

"Anni, if you really feel like you think you can talk some sense into them, be my guest."

"I just want to try. Whatever it is that they're bent out of shape over can't possibly be that bad. Maybe all they need is a mediator."

"You've been mediating for damn near eight years. At some point, a retired officer needs to not worry about guild administration shit. You don't have to do this."

"Kerulak, you know me. You know I can't let shit like this just drop."

Annihilation headed off to Herp Derp's vent server, with the hope of bringing back some options.

He couldn't.

But what he did bring back were a few quotes that guaranteed entertainment, particularly when considering the sources. I asked Annihilation what they said to him when he began his pilgrimage to resolve this inter-guild rivalry. And this is what they said to him.

A History of Histrionics

Bheer. A player who was in my guild as far back as Molten Core. A player for whom I carved a spot out in progression for, recommending a shift from druid to shaman in order to best get his raiding needs served. A player I promoted to Elite, only to then deal with his absence after he chose to leave progression without fair warning or explanation. A player I welcomed back to the guild without hesitation, defending him from alleged harassment from player like Crasian. A player who gladly accepted all this support, then thanked me with a single night of raiding in Cataclysm as a "courtesy", blaming rules he helped to shape as his justification for such decisions.

To Annihilation, Bheer said this:

"If Hanzo wants us to return, the first thing he's going to have to do is apologize."

Falnerashe. A player whose skill with healing was no match for her skill in judging others. A player adept at blaming failure on others with cruel insults, but rarely able to acknowledge her own incompetence at human decency. A player who stormed out of my guild, filling our forums with vile hatred toward a group of online strangers that chose to open the door and invite her in. A player whose people skills were so vast and immeasurable that her next home bled out until it was a guild of one. A player I decided was worth a second chance, because we are all human and make mistakes, that somewhere there was a shred of decency, that she was worthy of forgiveness, so that we could start fresh. A player I knew deep down wanted to play with experts, suffered no fools, and understood that our common top-end raiding culture had already begun to decay. A player that agreed to let me deal with drama, so she could focus on enjoying the game and not have to interact with idiocy; to let me push annoyances and ineffectuals out of her hair, so she wouldn't have to. The player who agreed to all of these things, and then walked away, and all of that effort wasn't even worth a single sentence explaining her exit.

To Annihilation, Falnerashe said this:

"I was expecting an officer position."

If Anni told me what Drecca said, or what Riskers said, or really any of the rest of Herp Derp, I've forgotten. I know that it was dismissive of the original issue, that they simply were tired of the fighting and wanted to get on with the playing. Which I think we can all agree is the end goal...just not at the price they were willing to pay.

But there is one more thing I remember about the quotable quotes that Anni's mediation attempt brought back. And it was really the one person I was most interested in hearing about, more than Falnerashe, more than Bheer, even more than Drecca. I was most interested in the person whom kicked this entire ordeal off. The person who gave me many opportunities to kick him to the curb (he made it very easy). The person I chose to invest in, kept working with, getting him to be more communicative, more accountable. The person who went from no-shows to texting me when he'd be a few minutes late, getting him to keep his shit together, getting him reliable, a skill far more valuable in real life than behind his shadow priest. The person I gave enough of a shit about that I constructed a new guild rank specifically for him, to make his raid life a little easier, then watched as he never even bothered to step one foot into that role, not even for a moment.

For that person, what he said to Anni spoke the greatest volume of all, because it confirmed every gut instinct I ever had about him, every red flag I chose to ignore, believing instead in the ability for a person to grow and take responsibility for their actions; to understand this was a game built on human interaction, and that we needed to rely on one another to achieve a common goal -- something he was bound to use in real life one day.

To Annihilation, Ben said absolutely nothing.

4.36. Hypocritic Oath

Mature assists Bonechatters, Turtleman and
Volitar (Toadie) in wrapping up "It's Frost Damage!",
Deadmines

The Cut-Off Point

Herp Derp was no longer a team, a fact dictated by Blizzard long before I had any say in the matter. To resolve conflict, I erred on the side of skeptical optimism; hoped for the best but planned for the worst. I liked Riskers, and believed he was capable of making the right decision. I also knew that the psychological drain of people management took finesse. He deserved the benefit of the doubt. But when it came time to declare an officially sanctioned team, Blizzard called that shot, and left me no choice but to circle back and plug holes I’d left open in DoD's code of conduct. It sucked. It had to be done.

Herp Derp definitely met my criteria that called for a named roster, an advertised schedule, and had an official Tactician leading the group.

"Leading"

But thanks to Falnerashe's abrupt exit, the roster was now a 7/3 split. And while DoD held the majority share in that team, it wasn't enough for World of Warcraft. Achievements required 8 of the 10 players present to be part of a single guild. The moment Fal parted ways with DoD, the Herp Derp clan went from an officially sanctioned 10-Man team to little more than a random group of guild members helping a handful of non-guildies.

"Helping"

Riskers wasn't making it a huge priority to solve the issue; as the responsible party, I expected a much quicker turnaround. But I didn’t expect miracles. The likelihood of Riskers being able to convince Drecca, Ben and Fal to return to the guild seemed exponentially monumental. And it's probably the reason he made no headway. I made it clear to Riskers that he wasn't expected to move mountains, only to the solve the problem at hand. Get them back, or replace them...whatever works.

It wasn't happening.

What was happening was their regularly scheduled raids, because boss killing and loot grabbing took precedence over mediating melodrama. I didn't blame him for not wanting to sink his teeth into a task most players would avoid faster than an LFD group dumping out of The Oculus. But Riskers' indecision was infecting the guild with dissent. It was a growing audit trail of absent leadership, lumped in with moments like his defense of Ben when the guild attacked.

"Attacked"

The window of opportunity to make a decision narrowed, but I could do little else for Riskers. It was his team, his responsibility to make the call. All I could do was ensure that DoD was prepared for the fallout, leaving little-to-no room for excuses when everything blew up in Herp Derp's face. DoD was the priority, not a random group of players that were proving to me that guild integrity was far less important than a 10-Man Heroic Cho'gall.

"10-Man Heroic". LOL. Stop it. You're killing me.

Mature, Bonechatters, Turtleman, Volitar and Dewgyd
race to Vanessa Van Cleef in under 5 minutes,
Deadmines

Guild Plumbing

Tacticians were the conduit between their team and the guild. In exchange for their administration efforts, I hiked up their access to the guild vault, so they could distribute repair gold and provide raiding flasks/food to their team. To cement DoD's commitment to the 10s, I gave them an additional perk: BoEs procured by the 25-Man progression team would go to the vault, offered up to Tacticians on a first come, first serve basis. The hope was that it might help take the edge off whatever difficulty their teams were experiencing. Primarily, this perk intended to narrow the raid qualification gap for new recruits, or to stave off the often streaky, horrific luck of Blizzard's RNG. Plugging the 10-Mans into the DoD framework in this way not only allowed me to hold a named individual responsible for their team's actions, it provided a clear means of rewarding teams that played by our rules....and if not, it was a valve I could easily shut off, until their options dried up.

It wasn't until I reached for the valve that I noticed the gaping hole in the pipe.

10-Man teams shouldn't need a legal declaration, their definition is baked directly into the title: if you have 10 people, you have a 10-Man team. Some teams have more, choosing to sit a bench just like the 25-Man progression team did. As WoW interest flares and subsides, a 10-Man team may find itself short a head or two, as well. If a Tactician is actively recruiting, however, absenteeism is justifiable. But if there is no forward movement on recruitment attempts, intentionally or otherwise, a 10-Man team can't be called what it isn't.

I didn't think I would have to go to such lengths. Then again, I also didn't conceive of a hypothetical future in which several guildies would defy our rules, and the person in charge would not make a swift decision. Had someone in, say, Bovie's team, or Jungard's team, or Joredin's team did something equally foolish, I was reasonably confident violaters would receive a swift kick in the ass to shape up or ship out.

...but I also never suspected Riskers would be the type of person to drag their heels. And in that moment, I realized I was making an assumption that any of them would act as quickly.

Yet you were intimately familiar with the ‘psychological drain of people management’. Nice work setting expectations.

What I was left with was a Tactician, seemingly incapable (or uninterested) in mediating, yet kept all the perks flowing back into his team while it remained in a pseudo-stasis, not recruiting, not replacing, but still raiding, using guild repairs and flasks, and wasting achievement after achievement due to their 7/3 split.

To light the fire under Riskers, I amended the requirements of Tactician to enforce the completeness of their respective 10-Man roster. It had to have 10 people, minimum, which qualified them for guild achievements. And if not at 10, they had to be actively recruiting, and I needed to see the evidence of it: posts on their team page, and working with me to recruit the necessary people for the role. Riskers had to have an officially sanctioned 10-Man team in order to keep his rank and to keep those perks flowing back into the team.

Once updated, I politely reminded him of my initial two week window, and encouraged him to be more aggressive in his approach to solving the problem. A few days later, a fourth Herp Derp member, Phame, left DoD. And every day Riskers said nothing to me, I felt awful. I liked him.

But I didn't like who he stood for.

As Sir Klocker begins 25-Man invites, Mature, Onionscoop,
Beefysupryme and Lix barely pull off "Headed South" in time,
Lost City of the Tol'vir

A Compromising Position

As March’s weeks bled into April, I continued to recruit, discarding nearly every applicant that arrived in my inbox. I was convinced that my then-age requirement of 23 was liberal enough to keep reasonable amount of new faces flowing into the guild, but it simply the wasn't the case. Email after email went to the trash, as 16, 17 and 18 year olds continued to submit applications, ignoring the first rule I laid out at the top of our application page. Occasionally, I would hit paydirt. Finally! An applicant able to comprehend my restrictions!

...only to find out the player was into heavy recreational drug use -- a habit that doesn't play nicely with reliability.

The masochist in me wasn't ready to take guild leadership to a new level of pain. Back to the drawing board I went, reviewing underage apps, then discarding them. Eventually, I backed down from my age requirement. For a temporary amount of time, I pitched a "guild promotion" to allow normally excluded applicants to be referred to DoD. If it was a decent app, they came in on solid footing, and were sponsored by a veteran, I agreed to waive the age requirement. We saw a few new faces during this period, but it would take time to determine if there was any value among these kiddies. Besides, there were more immediate hurdles I needed to vault.

Both the underage newbies and our existing legitimate apps had trouble climbing the DoD ladder. The steps were as easy as I could make them. You started as a Recruit with limited access to our forums. It was just enough to introduce yourself, but not enough to inadvertently say the wrong thing in the wrong place, wasting the time of the forum moderators while simultaneously making you look foolish. 

Over time, you worked your way into the system until you qualified for Guildy, which is when the raiding forums became available (in read-only mode). If you were interested in pursuing a raid spot, you didn't need to ask questions or harass players for more info -- everything was laid out in a set of crystal clear steps. Fill out your profile on the raid tool, make sure you log out wearing your best gear so leadership can verify the fundamentals: ilvl, gems, enchants, spec. 

After Raider qualification, you could sign up, were rotated in, and the game was afoot: you proved to us you were ready for the long haul. If you chose, you could push up into Samurai, gaining even more spots, being exposed more forums. Eventually, you were looped in to the Samurai peer review process, participating in a committee with personal investment in shaping who they played with, week to week.

This was simply all too much to handle.

They didn't know what to read, or where to go to find the right info, or why they couldn't create a raiding profile in our signup sheet. When they were made Guildy, they didn't know why they were unable to ask questions in the raider forum, and the concept of rotations eluded them -- even though it was painstakingly detailed in our guild policies and procedures. My gut told me they just needed to read, to use some of that elbow grease to get the brass ring. But as their inability lingered on, I suspected the answer was more dire: they read it...and legitimately did not understand a thing I asked of them.

This new generation of recruit wasn't one that plagued us in Wrath or earlier; inductees were pointed to DoD's steps-to-raiding, and players figured it out. And because of the limited bench, I couldn't waste time circling back, pointing and re-pointing and re-re-pointing to the same instructions over and over until it was jackhammered into their skull. The roster lacked faces. So, I did what I expected most guild leaders would do in a signup crisis...

I backpedaled.

New recruits to DoD were fast tracked into raiding, rather than forcing them to go through the motions. It required excessive micromanagement to ensure each and every one of them knew what was expected of them. In Wrath, if they didn't read the rules, didn't understand what I asked of them...they simply didn't get in. It forced players to re-evaluate their comprehension of DoD policy, and they either improved or withered away. With the roster sitting at 24-25 heads (barely) each week, there was no room to play games. I either accelerated the promotion rate so they could join the 25-Man, or there would be no 25-Man.

There is nothing quite like the feeling of drawing lines through your own hand-crafted rules; a signed confession of a hypocrite.

No, I did not envy Riskers' position, faced with a team that was actively betraying his own beliefs, yet simultaneously aware of his own participation in it. I did not envy him, but I understood his hesitance. And I felt awful for him. And for his end game.