When I was THAT raid leader

The common social guild goes goes nowhere, because they are carrying various M&S "friends". The archetype of this situation is the girlfriend of the raid leader who is invited to every raid, despite sucking.

My girlfirend is either #1 or #2 on the damage meters in every raids. However she figured that she tries raiding with her alt. She leveled a worgen warlock for guild achievement and now geared up and practiced rotations. She made a unique supporter spec that included replenishment, jinx and spell damage decrease. So the little worgen became a good supporter character.

But her DPS sucked. Not at the tank level, but about 2/3 of #1. But do you know what was the really shocking thing: other people damaged even less and I did not noticed. I checked the logs for fails after a wipe (and always found some), but never for overall low DPS. I think sub-consciously did not want to notice that her damage is low.

Even I'm not safe from the social sub-routines. That's why it's important to have an asocial environment where others tell that "hey, your girlfriend and 2 others damage terribly". Among socials you can suck terribly and no one tells you.

Now that I was informed of it, it won't cause any more problem. She won't raid as warlock, unless on bosses where 4 healers are too many, 3 are too few. She gives replenishment and have very good damage mitigation. And she definitely outdamage an extra healer. Her best position is at Baleroc. With Nether protection, Mirror of broken images, Demon armor, glyph of soul link and health funneling the pet to not die, she can take a whole shard alone, letting the healers to get very high stacks of vital spark. I finished the fight with 178 stacks (870% healing bonus). And got 40K mana from her too.

But we must always be aware that she is a special support character and not an overall DD. For that role she must come as hunter. Where her special abilities are not needed, she is just a weak DD who has no place in a raid (unless it's a boost raid).

The last will of Eunike

No, no one died in real life. Just a player left the game, meaning that his character, Eunike will not be playing with us again. Technically the character is not "dead" as the player can choose to return anytime, but it's unlikely. So he put his gold (70K) to the guild bank, donated 40K to a friend, asking me to send him in 5K pieces in 8 weeks. He also sent me lot of stuff to sell and put the gold to the guild bank. As you know, the gold in the bank serves only one purpose, free repairs, so it's pretty equally distributed in the guild.

Trying to sell his things isn't easy, despite my experience in buying and selling. He had very different business from me, so I don't know when and how to sell the items. I can just brute force it: scan the AH and trust the addon. I try to sell the epics at the horde as they buy those things more. However, large part of his fortune is not even in my mailbox. It lies with the now inactive character as soulbound stuff. He could reclaim very little of its value by disenchanting or vendoring.

This reminded me handling the stuff of a deceased family member. No, she wasn't that close, I helped the close relative. There I found the same: most of the stuff she had were "soulbound", things that worth a lot to her, but nothing to the surviving relatives. Not even emotional value, as they were simple "gear". Clothes, medicine, furniture, things we all need and use but can't really pass on.

One could say death is the biggest destroyer of material value, devaluing lot of items into rubbish in a second. However it's not true. The item is just the same as it was when its owner lived. The value destroyer is "soulbounding". "Bind when equipped" or even "bind on pick-up" is very common in real life too. The shirt in the shop may worth $50. If you buy it, even if you don't open the package, you can only sell in a second hand shop for about half of it. If you wear it, just once, even the second hand shop will give you less than $10.

The solution, both ingame and real life is "simple": don't buy stuff that you don't use soon. Later you can't un-soulbound it, and neither you, nor the ones who inherit it can use it.

Speak up!

I'm always surprised how scared people of confrontation. It's mostly explained by sociality itself: if you disagree with someone, he will have negative feelings for you. So people prefer even completely stupid things than disagreeing others.

However in an environment that have even a spark of rationality, like a workplace or in any decent guild confrontation based on facts is always preferred than doing something stupid.

We had a weird raid because of that. It was Beth'litac farm who supposed to be killed in maximum 3 tries, and not spend 2 hours on her. 80% of the wipes was because of the healer up. He found various ways to die or let his tank die. I fined him, no effect. Finally I replaced him. Despite he was one of the best healers and was replaced with someone who use to pay lot of fail fees, the boss was down in 2 tries.

After replacement he whispered that going up was really bad for him and he somehow couldn't do the task. Wonderful. If he could say it after 2 wipes the boss would be dead an hour ago and he could have been on the kill, getting his 1800G share of the pot. But he remained silent, leaving me in the belief that he can do it, just need to concentrate more or finally grasp that missing part of the job. I could have sent the other healer up (who finally went up and done perfectly). I could go up and learn that part of the fight. Finally, I could replace him and then he'd have several hundred gold and an hour time more.

But no, he choose not to speak up against the "boss" who sent him up. He did what he could, hoping that something will happen and save the day. It never does.

If you know something that the boss doesn't, speak up! He will be grateful. If not, he is an idiot and you shall leave his domain anyway.

Also, while "sorry I can't do it" is shameful, it's definitely less shameful than failing again and again. If you tell it, you allow the boss or the others to somehow fix the problem. I'm sure that "the priest did not want the hard job" is less remembered than "the priest failed 8x".

A more technical version of not speaking up is mentioning something with "maybe" or "between the lines" and when it's ignored, assume that it was rejected. No, rejection means rejection, ignoring means ignoring. The leader simply lost your communication between 10 other lines aimed to him, including random "cud u plz inv me 2 guld" crap. If you did not get an answer, ask again. When readycheck comes, press "not ready" and ask again. Don't let it go away until properly (even if negatively) answered.


PS: the guild's no attendance rule applies to roles. No one can blame you if you don't want a particular role. It's true that you can be replaced by someone who does it, but it does not decrease your chances on other bosses at all.

When asociality is necessary

People don't really understand why I insist on the term of "asociality" or even "anti-sociality". Why do I proclaim that emotionless, NPC-like behavior with peers is necessary? They say that simple rationality, logic and businessman thinking is enough. What I talk about is both unnecessary and disturbing. I just put some sick nonsense on the top of 4-centuries old idea of the light of ration and try to sell it as my own.

On the other hand socialists claim that I (and every other wannabe rational) is just young, unexperienced and with time they will "mature". Logically it makes no sense. If they would have a good argument, it would convince us today. If they have just bad ones, we could listen to them a couple of years, but it wouldn't make any difference.

I finally have a clear reason why asociality is necessary and the idea of "rational person with emotions" is oximoron. I can also explain what the socialists mean with their "time will change you" nonsense.

Someone returned WoW after long hiatus. I know him from real life. I've known him since early childhood. We spent lot of time together. For better or worse, this person is one of the closest to me. Like every returner, he lost contact with "gaming friends". He asked if he can join our guild, so we can play together, sharing both the game and also strengthen the ties between us real life. I felt very uneasy about this. I knew it's a bad idea. I told him to read the guild rules carefully, hoping that he'll find them too strict and not fun, moving away. He didn't.

No, he isn't a bad player in the sense of being below the tank or standing in the fire. He is actually pretty good in these. He was in some pretty good guilds before he left WoW, but he never stayed long in those guilds, for a reason. He has simply no respect for any kind of organization or authority. He doesn't care much for the effect of his action on others. If something is fun for him, he does that, and screw the rest. You can tell easily that no matter how high your DPS is, such attitude doesn't last in any HC guild.

It was only matter of time before it became a problem here. We went to rated BG and he joined. It was Battle of Gilneas. We held LH and mine, they had WW. The mentioned player was the only healer at LH. The horde was busy attacking mine, LH was boring. He got bored and went a one-man commando on WW without even mentioning it. Of course LH came under attack when the horde figured out that taking mine won't happen and when I opened the map I saw the LH healer at WW. We arrived at LH when the last defender was on 5% HP and saved the day. We won. Of course he wasn't praised for his recklessness what he took pretty badly, insisting on that it was actually a great move as he kept several hordies busy at WW. I explained him that he can't count on the opponents always being morons in a rated BG (it's pretty safe assumption in a random BG) and even if they are, a damage dealer or especially a tank would be much better for the job than a healer, especially when we have to run with only 3.

Next battle, same Gilneas, we had LH and WW, the latter heavily pressed. So I sent one of the LH defenders, a feral cat to try to ninja mine, or at least make some noise there to keep hordies busy. Soon "inc LH" was spammed and when I opened the map, I saw him next to the cat, attacking mine. Another desperate run for LH, now with less luck. They won. The people were pretty upset about his obvious negligence of strategy and I had to replace him. He ragequitted the guild and sent me whisper how shocked he was for me not standing up for him, despite our long and deep connection. He told something like "you are unable to express/feel love" (hard to translate such stuff from a different language).

The guild noticed nothing from it. TB was coming, we crushed the horde once more, gathered up the PvP-ers and chain-won enough matches to get over 1500 rating, the highest we had before. If you'd ask anyone who was there, he would say "some noob messed up a game, got replaced, ragequitted and we won".

This is where a social, feeling person would have failed, no matter how many leadership, assertivity or rationality books he read. There was no middle ground here. I knew that he will mess up the next game too, he will not apologize and he will insist that he is doing right. I can't just look the other way, hoping that no one notices. Also, he will not accept something like "I knew you did right but we need a more defensive guy so I replace you". I could only defend him fully or watch him ragequit not only from the game-guild, but probably from our real life connection too. For him, it was betrayal. For me it wasn't a question. For a social it wouldn't be either, just with the opposite outcome.

The socialists believe in "time will teach you", because they know that one day it won't be some random Arthasdklól on the receiving end of rationality. They know that it's easy to tell a random idiot to die in the fire, just like you can tell a random drunken bum to go to hell. But one day some close friend, family member or even romantic partner will mess something up big time. And then, if you are a feeling, loving person, you will start finding excuses for him/her. No, my sister isn't a drunkard, just having a good time. No, my dad isn't a lazy punk, he just can't find a job. No, my best friend isn't a junkie, just experimenting with recreational drugs. And the well-known situation: no, my girlfriend doesn't suck in WoW, she just needs more gear.

At this point there are two ways left only: plain nepotism, helping the loved one, but keeping to judge the others, or socialism: helping everyone.

Socialists don't need arguments. All they need is time, until you get into this situation. You will fail, like they did. You will choose the loved one over the rational answer. I did not fail. Not because I'm superman, but because I practice a-sociality. For me it was the obvious and un-questioned answer. Only when I logged off I started to think if there is something I could do to salvage our relationship.

There is no middle way. There could be if other people would be great. But they are not. Every family and friend-group have seriously messed up people. They won't accept you if you won't accept their failure as "unluck" or even "success". They will force you to choose. And if you are not a-social, you will choose wrong, you'll be one of those idiots who claim that Arthasdklól just needs some more gear.

Faction based PvP games

There are faction based PvP games. None of them were any successful. Tol Barad shown clearly why: if there is some kind of faction-balancer, like limiting the amount of people in the battlefield, or some tenacity-like buff, the most effective way to win is to make the worst players on your team leave. In TB we mostly win by recruiting dumb horde on their trade and yelling on the morons who fight on the road or go to a tower.

Therefore a faction based PvP game by its nature is hostile to new and casual players, and of course the dumb people, limiting the possible playerbase seriously.

I doubt that even the very limited faction-based PvP of Tol Barad is "fun" for most people. It's definitely fun for us devastating poor hordies, but the fun comes from enjoying a meta-game, and not the game itself. It's definitely less fun to the hordies. It's not at all fun to us when too many lolkids sign up on our side and we can start over the yelling and reporting and threatening instead of playing.

It is most frustrating to PvE players who just want to go Occu'thar. They can either hope and wait, or join the battle, making their side even weaker (and if they are on our side, get some yells). Considering how hard it was to equalize Tol Barad, I'd say Blizzard will abandon the idea.

PvP games need some kind of ladder system, where equally strong teams are matched. It is impossible to do in an MMO where the sides are based on creating a character.