It wasn’t glorious or as exciting a role, and would never generate huge numbers or records on a damage chart
While this is highly subjective (and on a personal note, how dare you, tanking is awesome) I think you need to specify what tanking isn’t as exciting as (I’m assuming you mean DPS). “It wasn’t as glorious or as exciting a role as DPS, and would never generate huge numbers…”
It goes without saying that my Annihilation got along fantastically with Ater
Absolutely correct: ‘glorious’ and ‘exciting’ aren’t synonymous, and also subject to my own personal opinion. I’ve attempt a rephrase of this part of the paragraph.
You’ll see this typo a lot as I swap out from a common to a personal pronoun in the raw edits. More than likely, it was typed as “warrior officer” the first go-around.
I really think you need to revise this whole section, and why I split from DoD and started Illusion. There was a whole subset of DoD that never got to raid, and all the people that gquit that day were part of the “b” team that decided to leave and follow me to Illusion. It also had pretty much nothing to do with my wife getting gratz. I also like one screen shot of me not having my ony cloak even though I had naxx gear by that point. The main reason for leaving is Annihilation bringing in his asshat warlock friend that was overriding every thing i was saying as a lock officer, and not being backed up by the guild leadership. It turned into another khaevil situation, except you were clueless it was happening, and the only thing I could do was quit and let anni’s friend take all the lock gear and leave your guild. I cannot for the life of me remember his name, but he was in another guild within like 2 months, hoarding gear from another guild.
Hm, perhaps someone else can read the story and remember the warlock’s name, as that’ll help tremendously.
In the meantime, here are some immediate questions to bridge the gap:
Why did you give me this as a reason for leaving? If it wasn’t relevant (or flat out untrue), why did it even come up in conversation?
Do you happen to remember specific incidents where this was taking place? The more concrete examples I have, the easier it will be for me to frame this in the blog, especially if I was blind to it. I don’t know if you’ve read past that blog post, but the intent of Part II (TBC) is to drive home the fact that I had an amateurish handle on leadership (at best) and missed a lot of things.
Do you feel like there was any specific reason why you didn’t take me aside and say, “Look, Kerulak. This shit is happening, and it needs to be addressed, or we walk.” I realize ultimatums aren’t necessarily the best way to initiate change, but at least there might have been a dialogue bringing the issues to my attention.
If we can get the straight story, I’ll absolutely consider revising; as I mentioned on Twitter, I’ve had to go back and gut the undercarriage several times already when new information came to light. At the same time, it’s important that the blog/story conveys the information I was working with at that time, which wasn’t much. You and I carried on an amicable friendship after the fact, but it’s important for the readers to understand what was going through my head when limited information was available to me. Resolutions to those stories come later (if you continue to read, similar guildies get the same treatment).
I really wish I could remember that locks name, it was in Naxx after I had become lock officer that Anni’s buddy ran roughshot over me in raid and in gchat. Anni defended him at every turn. The other problem is the DoD B team that was trying to gear up, and even in previous posts you said there were 2 40 man teams, but that’s not quite how it was, the second team raids barely could clear MC, even though they wanted the chance to raid. Roswen, and Clint, and cantos and others that I had brought into the guild with me from Crudadiers of concordia, the people that I had play with early in WoW. I kept ensuring them spots for raid only for them to be disappointed every week. I’m not dumping on you kerulak, but I think you’re seeing a lot of our old raids with rose tinted glasses, and not seeing the bulk of DoD members that got left behind. I took the people that were disappointed every week that didn’t get to raid, and formed a TBC raiding guild that did what we wanted and it was good fun. DoD was a good stepping stone, but I felt a lot of people in the guild were being left behind, and the day you saw all the /gquits was a culmination of the pent up anger of being ignored.
Do you think that the situation of B-Team being left behind was exacerbated by the fact that 40s had been killed in favor of 25s in TBC? The reason I bring this up as a possibility is because of the sheer amount of time it took to get people ready even for the entry level tier 4 raids, which for me, seemed liked an eternity; we were perpetually keying people.
Also, what was the specific situation with certain individuals being left behind? This is the biggest puzzle in the story, because if I really was struggling to get folks keyed and raring to go in Gruul’s Lair/Magtheridon’s Lair, why were these players like Roswen and Clint being turned away? Did they give you specific reasons? The exodus happened before Blain returned to take leadership duties, which would imply I had yet to tighten the noose on our expectations of raiders (which is essentially when it happened). So, if the rope was loose and we were letting anyone go…I really would like to know what those B-team folks were being told.
The b team was being ignored before TBC, and the new raids just increased the gap between guildies. I had brought in a lot of people from my old guild, and the had been very patient in trying to be able to raid. Then I started losing my raid spot to Anni’s lock buddy and at the time I will say it seemed like anni and ater’s word were bond, and you were unwilling to listen to anyone else, even if it caused a khaevil situation that you were blissfully unaware of.
I was asked to come here and add my 2c worth and after reading this I’m glad this is being brought up.
Without sounding like a total shithole, I will do my best.
Dreadlocker leaving was one out of two times I felt I had really fucked up as a a player, officer and worst of all as a friend.
The way I remember things Dread,myself and a few others from DoD and not from DoD were trying to take back a world pvp spot and I was on my Lock trying to get more and more people ported in. If my memory is correct, Dread didnt like me telling people what to do or where to be but thats what I always did. I tried my best to make sure we could push peoples shit in at world PvP. The day after that I get a message that Dread left the guild and it was because of me. I tried to talk to you Dread and got ignored and when I finally got a hold of him and said he didnt want to talk about it.
I have never heard anything about Warlock friends(gonna assume hes talking about Ouleg and or Teras)getting raid spots over anyone else. If I have ever showed favoritism toward anyone it was always to players I knew put it work over players who didn’t. That being said I only had control over warriors. I have never asked for any class officers to let in someone I “liked” over anyone else. I have never asked Kerulak to let in anyone over anyone else. Warriors were mine, if they did their job they stayed mine if not I would just replace, no hard feelings.
I have never heard anything about anyone feeling that they were B-teamed. I took it upon myself to make sure that DoD always had a huge roster of people to get get for raids by running 4 raids a week of my own on 5 different toons for more than a year and a half at the cost of a Girlfriend(who could not cook so no real loss). I apologize if anyone felt like they were B-teamed but I don’t leave anything in a game or real life just because of how I “feel” about it, I make the changes I want to see and I make it happen. Dreadlocker was a great friend and if he would have just opened his mouth to me or to anyone we could have made some changes. Him leaving really sucked for me because I thought it was my “fault” but in reality it’s just another person who never said a word to anyone about anything except to type it to Clint and Ros and the others who left. If he would have just typed to Kerulak or myself on any of these issues they could have been resolved.
To all the Class Officers, I had the best Class to look after, we had the best players controlling those toons and I really fucking miss playing together.
P.S. I heard Dalans is dating a guy from India! Is this true? If it is, Grats to you my friend you deserve to finally have happiness! Mariska Hargitay Dalans!!
Anyways, not to derail but I have to agree with Anni. If there were complaints being made, and in the amount that Dread is portraying, I’d love to know who they were addressed to because I didn’t hear shit about it. That day when I was online and saw those guys out in Nagrand and then a bunch people started jumping ship, I let Shawn know who was already trying to figure out WTF was going on and wasn’t getting a response.
I kind of posted my thoughts about the whole A-team/B-team in the blog comments but from what I can remember of the B-team MC runs and hearing reports back from Ater, it was always a massive clusterfuck. We all as a group of players, with the same competent leadership managed to figure out MC so why couldn’t that group of players do it? I’ll agree that everyone learns at a different pace but progression doesn’t allow for hand holding. We would have had many more people leave due to burnout if the rotations were any different.
The main issue that the B team raiders would have, is that it would be scheduled, and people would show up, but the main A raid was short on either tanks or healers earlier in the week and poached them from the B team raids. So the B team raids always were a clusterfuck of undergeared alts trying to help newer raiders in MC. That is what was upsetting to ros and joe a lot of the time, they would show up on time for a raid and then get dicked out of the run because there weren’t enough Mains left to run it. This went on for weeks at the end of vanilla. We would be raiding Naxx, and the B team would be trying to do MC and just couldn’t get it going. I heard about it more than anyone else because all my friends that I had brought to the guild from my old guild were stuck on the B team.
So why was nothing ever said? I’ll say it again, I never rotated Ouleg or or anyone at anytime unless you were a warrior. I think Eacavissi was lock officer back then. I don’t know if you know this but behind closed doors there was never a time in my experience that any officer ever asked another officer to let a “friend” in over anyone else during rotations. It was a great self check that Kerulak put in. We just didn’t do shitty crap like that. Later on when we would just be mowing through certain instances we would have people switch out for a chance at gear but even that wasnt done with any favortism and I kept a list of who needed what just to finish off set pieces. That was done way after MC, Naxx. It also made it a great way for geared people to help non geared gear up fast but none of that was anywhere near vanilla.
I don’t know what you think I (we) did as far as rotations but for years until I stopped being an officer it was the fairest system it could possibly be. You put in work, you got work. Simple.
The funny thing is that if I did do rotations as favors for friends, Eaca would have been getting a wisp from me asking to rotate you in over someone else.
Ouleg is a friend, Teras is a friend, Dreadlocker is a friend.
Speaking as a member of the B team, we never expected to be handed anything that we had not worked for, we just wanted the chance to work for it. What killed the perceptions of the guild for the B team members was around the end of vanilla when several A team members became less reliable, and all of a sudden our best players were getting taken each week to fill in the A team raid. This resulted in the B team only getting to raid every other weekend at best, and towards the end of vanilla, almost never. Due the the fact that we were the B team, and were already having to fill in some of our other members from less progressed guildies as it was, losing a key healer/DPS/tank was fatal to our weekly raid. I remember several molten core runs when the final remnants of what was left of the B team (alot of our regular teammates had quit the guild long before the final exodus) and yes, I completely admit, they were clusterfuck runs. What you have to consider though is that by then we had lost several of our better members to the A team to fill in those that had quit raiding once word of the expansion had been announced, and of the few we had left several had gotten fed up and quit, either for other guilds or for PvP. By the time some members of the A team became interested in actually running molten core with us, the B team was a tattered remnant of what could of possibly been a great team. Unfortunately, we were never given the opportunity to consistently raid as a team, as the A team did, and I honestly believe that with our key players and a chance to run as a team each week, we would have performed much better.
Regarding our complaints about having members poached, we brought this up each time it happened, talked to officers, and were basically told that it was for the good of the guild. This complaint and the response we received exacerbated our difficulties with the guild when added to the fact that A team players were using DKP earned on much higher DKP bosses during their A team runs to buy gear for their alts on B team runs, limiting the few items of gear that we could get when we did raid. Imagine showing up each week on time for a raid, only to have it canceled every other week, and when you can run, an alt gets the one piece of gear during the entire run that you could have used.
These issues just highlighted something that would have been impossible as a GL to predict, the difficulties that a guild goes through when a new expansion has been announced and previously reliable players become unreliable. I know that me and Clint personally brought up the B team probems to several officers, and when talking to other B team members were told that they had done the same. This is just one of the issues that come about when a game is evolving, but I do believe that if we had gotten a different response from the officers that we had talked to, more of the B team players would have stayed.
I’m sorry if you didn’t notice ouleg’s attitude towards locks after being in the guild less than a week, and already running Naxx with us, and then over vent telling me to shut the fuck up. The dude rubbed me the wrong way from the start and did not earn his spot at all. He was handed a Naxx raiding spot while others were left to flop around in MC. He then went on to take my spot in AQ40
Yeah Ouleg is super abbrasive for sure. I never noticed locks taking over anyones spot over anyone elses. I do know I never asked for him to be rotated in over you. To Ros, do you know which officers you guys talked to? I’m sorry that you guys were going through that and it looks to be that it was going on for awhile.
To Dread, I’m sorry if you felt raid spots were taken from you guys in any instance. I don’t know how that was being handled by your officer.
During this time you guys are saying that DoD was doing Naxx and poaching players that were trying to go to MC? What happened to Black Wing Lair? We spent months in that place. WE got faceraped all day in Naxx.
I remember doing quite a few runs on the B-team MC runs on some of my DPS alts, and while my memory is quite hazy, one thing I do remember from those runs was the sheer amount of people showing up extremely late and taking off early making those runs a PITA to do anything. There may have been a few that wanted the chance to push through the instance, but there was a FAR larger core that just wanted to be carried through with as little effort as possible.
As for the poaching, isn’t that the entire purpose? B-team raiders wanted the chance to raid the higher end instances and some of them were needed, so got pulled in. Shouldn’t that be a good thing? Shouldn’t you be cheering that system for letting some of the people who probably weren’t as geared as they should have been experience Naxx and AQ40? Yea, it sucks having to find replacements, but thats 90% of the job for raiding,
Maybe I’m just taking this the wrong way, but from what I remember one of the only things you needed to do in order to advance in raiding spots was play well. I do remember quite a bit of grumbling about the A and B team rifts, and most of the time it was completely useless complaints. Asking the A team to raid twice as much each week just to fill the slack of other members? Casual raiding guild and all kind of makes that situation lose lose. We either force the main raid team to gear up future replacements, or shut down the extra raid teams entirely and poach from other raiding guilds to find replacements.
DoD chose to try and help out as many people expereince the end game as they could, In my opinion, I think blaming the leadership for not effectively handling the logistics of an 80+ man raid team is passing the buck. They did the best they could, and without people stepping up to fix the problems how could you expect them to keep everything running perfectly? I remember quite clearly trying to set up a 2nd MC run before the B-team thing got started, and I got all the help I requested from officers but the people who said they wanted to run it simply didn’t show up.
Reading your reply klocker makes me Hot! Why is it that when you type all I want to do is get naked and pour orange juice down my chest!!! While the juice is flowing I put 2 skittles on my sternum and imagine its you and I on a slip and slide of love!
@Jared_Cook@Roswan I see now where you guys are coming from but I already spoke to this a bit…even at the very minimum we went from 40 players having raid spots to 25 players having raid spots and 15 people being SOL. Now with DoD and the type of guild we were trying to be (and succeeded at for far longer than just about any other guild on the server) we had 40 raiders and 20 fillers/rotations suddenly turn into 25 raiders and 35 fillers. Like I said it would have been impossible to keep progression moving, keep players from burning out, keep interest in the raid if we were making that many rotations on a weekly basis.
I realize you are speaking about players being taken from the B team or alt run or whatever you want to call it but that run would not even exist if we didn’t have the progression raid run the way it had. Why? Because the guild would have ceased to exist far sooner because of the aforementioned problems. It was no secret that the focus was the progression run but I also don’t recall holding a gun to anyone’s head and forcing them into those raids.
I understand how frustrating that was, to get together and wait around for people to show up, to whisper folks and check for raid locks or availability or whatever; I had done it plenty of times when running Gruul’s when a RL was late or not available…when we struggled to fill the raids for SSC early to midway through TBC but for the Nth time that I have asked this in game, and all over again here and in the comments on the blog:
What’s the better solution?
Really I would love to hear it. That is not me being snarky or sarcastic. I want to know what you think would have worked.
As far as tke DKP situation goes, I don’t know who was saying that mains could use DKP for their alts or whatever the situation turned out to be but that was never allowed and actually the DKP system didn’t even function that way. Earned DKP was tied to a player name, even if you wanted to say “I’m on my alt which has 50 DKP but my main has 100 DKP so that means I have 150 DKP I’m spending it on X” your alt character would run into the negative which wasn’t allowed at any point in time. Either you are misremembering it or the B team used some system (which I don’t think is the case because IIRC Neps was submitting DKP strings from his rogue for those runs yes?).
