Lately all the drama, work, and effort of running this stupid guild have made it so logging on is something I have to force myself to do.
I like raiding, when I’m actually in the raid, I’m invariably having fun. It’s all the hoops I have to jump through just to get there that are making me wish I was anywhere else. I don’t like having to threaten, beg, and cry twice a week before I can get to have fun. I don’t like being blamed or having to blame others for late starts.
The long and short is, I’m downloading today’s patch and contemplating announcing my retirement from the guild after raid tonight. Being responsible makes the game not fun for me. I have the deepest respect for people who can do it. I realize somebody has to do it, or nobody can have fun with group content (unless they’re iron willed enough to PuG all their raids). Out of acknowledgement of the fact that someone has to step up, I thought I should step up and make things work. Instead I’m finding myself contemplating cancelling my subscription and disappearing without a word to anyone.
Ok, so I won’t really do that. But I find that I’ve put myself in a really awful place… by making the guild a lot better than it was, Naelian and I have built up an expectation and a commitment to the people in the guild. Now if we leave, we’d really be screwing them over, because there’s nobody else in guild that could do what we’ve been doing. Without us, the whole thing would fall apart, and I’d feel terribly responsible.
But I’m gonna get an ulcer from this thing.
In other news, today’s patch notes announce that Blizzard has nerfed the hell out of practically all the heroics, which were already pitifully easy and boring to begin with:
- The Nexus
- Anomalus will now use the Create Rift ability only once, down from 3 times.
- The Old Kingdom
- Elder Nadox now only gets one Ahn’Kahar Guardian during the encounter.
- Jadoga Shadowseeker now only ascends once during the encounter.
- Several enemies between the Befouled Terrace and The Desecrated Altar have been removed or had their pathing altered.
- Pit of Saron
- Players can now zone back into the instance if they are dead while encounters with Krick and Ick or Forgemaster Garfrost are in progress.
- Utgarde Pinnacle
- Skadi the Ruthless can now be removed from his drake with 3 harpoon strikes, down from 5.
- Svala Sorrowgrave now casts Ritual of the Sword 1 time during the encounter, down from 3.
Am I the only one who feels like Blizz is shoving Icecrown down their throat? I feel like they’re saying to me, why aren’t you in our awesome new raid dungeon yet? We made it disgustingly easy to gear up, why are you still farting around in Ulduar? Here, we’ll make it even easier, by taking one of the only faintly interesting alternative activities for endgame players, and make it so mind numbingly boring that you’ll just have to go try Icecrown Citadel.
Bah, I’m grumpy and old, and I’m annoyed, and it’s hard to talk with this giant chunk of ICC shoved halfway down my throat.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
This thing ain't worth an ulcer. Not ever.
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The minute I post this whiny rant, we have a beautiful smooth TOC clear tonight and everything is as good as it possibly could be. I swear, WoW was designed to mimic the experience of a bipolar individual.
*hugs* Poor Rhii, that sounds *awful*, and, yes, if you've got to the stage that you're seriously thinking of quitting the game, then it's time to priortise yourself. As Grimmtooth says, no ulcer. Fun. Not ulcer.
Whatever decision you end up making regarding the guild, it was extremely brave and generally awesome of you to step up and take on the guild, and all its problems. And I hope you'll always feel bloody proud of yourself.
Also it strikes me that your guild has is using you both incredibly unfairly – I mean although a guild depends on its leaders, it's also the sum of its parts. Everybody has to take responsibility – by turning up on time and investing in the success of the guild as a whole.
In short, if they can't do that, they don't deserve you.
1) Delegate!
2) OPEN WIDE!!!
I was in your situation a couple of years ago; running a guild by default because when the GM left there weren't any better alternatives. I ran it for about nine months after that, and we had some success, but I ended up gkicking the raid leader, for constantly gkicking people without justification. I had been getting fed up with things before that; after that we tried some more raiding but it didn't work out and I ended up disbanding the guild. Since then, I've been in a few other guilds, usually to play with friends or just to try something new. I haven't taken a leadership role in any of them; I just bring my toon, DPS or heal my behind off, and have fun… It's true that giving up the guild stank, it wasn't very long before I realized that I was actually enjoying myself and looking forward to logging in, instead of dreading what new mess I'd have to deal with when I popped into Azeroth. Life after being a GM is actually quite nice!
As to the dungeon nerfs, they don't really make them easier as much as they make them less annoying.
Multiphase fights don't work when 95% of people are so geared that the normal phase lasts maybe 5 seconds. I don't know if you play Arcane or not, but it was absolutely no fun to have Jedoga go airborne and unattackable before I ever get my 4th AB stack up, which of course falls off in time for the volunteer.
And the Pit of Saron changes are a bug fix. All heroics are supposed to allow a player to re-enter the dungeon during a boss fight.
I see your point… normally these days I'm not the mage, I'm the holy pally… but when I play my mage I'm reduced to using quicker abilities than 4xAB AM/Abarr because I don't have time because of phase shifts. So your point does stand.
My point is that there's a LONG way until Cataclysm and the only thing that I do in wow these days that interests me *remotely* is raid two nights a week. It irks me to see content that is already too trivial trivialized even further. I'm bored brainless.