8 people logged in at raid time
You know what that means. Yup. We need to recruit again. We had a couple of weeks of blissful overpopulation with players on the bench at raid time. Now we’re down 2 and we nearly could not raid this week.
To compound the roster problems, I have had a very nasty Internet service degradation this week that causes packet delays of up to 5 seconds. In a raid this translates to all action freezing for several seconds then zipping forward in time very quickly. We had only 10 people logged in on Tuesday, so we ran Ulduar 25 instead of Firelands-10, on the theory that my inability to play at full capacity wouldn’t doom us. On Wednesday, somebody made an effort to log in especially to cover for me. On Thursday, that person couldn’t do it again, so we had exactly 10. And I raided.
Miraculously, we got heroic Shannox, normal Baleroc, and normal Majordomo down. Normal Ragnaros was immune to our charms. I only caused a couple of wipes through lag making the server & I disagree about whether I was standing in fire. I don’t think the Ragnaros failure was my fault, and that astounds me. My numbers were way down, though. I had to heal speculatively, predicting what was going to happen in the next several seconds. How I kept my Shannox dog tank alive until the end of the fight, I’ll never know. Thank you Rejuv and Lifebloom for covering those seconds when I was frozen. And no, Comcast has not yet repaired my Internet and I don’t want to write about it here because I am finding dealing with them amazingly frustrating.
But this can’t continue. We were down two players. With my Internet out and no schedule from Comcast on when it’s going to get better, we’re down three. Recruiting is suddenly urgent.
Obligatory pitch
We raid T/W/Th, 7:45-11:30pm Eastern, on Alliance-side Medivh-US. We’re 1/7 in Firelands-10 hardmodes, working on Lord Rhyolith. We’re recruiting 1 ranged dps (any class, a warlock would be awesome) and 1 healer (holy pally preferred, can’t really fit in another priest). Our guild site has more information on things like our DKP system.
When I evaluate applicants, personality fit matters most to me, after the ability to make raid times. This actually goes both ways. Any applicant should be trying to figure out if our guild personality suits them. Will we all get along? I really want to recruit people who’ll stick around with the guild for a long time, becoming one of the circle of friends. I’d encourage an applicant to listen in on a raid and see if we sound copacetic. Our last applicant (who’s turned into a spiffing member) said that she wanted to stick around with us because we were “all so polite”. No yelling, few four-letter words, definitely no racist crap. And you’d be joining a raid team with at least 3 women. (2 others make the schedule less often.)
The other thing that matters, I think, is the skill match. It sucks when we learn a recruit doesn’t play as well as we do. And I bet it would suck for a recruit to learn that we’re not good enough to meet his or her expectations. We’re not a top-anything guild, so for sure there are lots of players out there better than we are. I do love recruiting players who are at least a little bit over my head, though. Brings the overall level of play up…
Back to the GM whinging
The thing I worry most about in raids these days is trying to keep that tone polite and constructive, particularly after wipes. I have one player who tends to get stressed out and frustrated and express it non-productively, but I have my ways of getting that channeled differently. I try to lead by example there, as best I can. I was really pleased to have our newcomer describe us as she did, because that’s what I want. A minor success!
The GM role still sort of baffles me. I am not a wildly social person. Introvert all the way, really. But I can turn on the extroversion when needed, I guess.
Now if only I can keep myself interested in the game. Those Molten Front dailies hit me hard. I came to loathe what felt like an obligation for far too many days. Sigh.
