The better solution, was exactly what happened, I took the people that wanted to raid to another guild, it trimmed the fat from DoD and I took players with me that I had played with prior to DoD and close friends. By the time we left and started Illusion there had been enough of a rift that it just needed to happen. Graulm had come back to WoW and it was time to do something new, especially knowing that a lot of us would not be part of the new progression raids.
Ok then I guess the original question that Shawn asked remains: why did you not say this was the reason for leaving or was it just a miscommunication in the heat of the moment? What I recall hearing was also what Shawn stated, and that people were being ignored in guild chat and that there was a PvP disagreement during the event in Nagrand when Ouleg/Anni tried to tell you how to play your warlock (which isnât really a reason to mass quit the guild, but if it was more a situation of the âstraw that broke the camelâs backâ that I can understand).
I donât think the blog post would need a revision because that was the information provided at the time and honestly thatâs what we all thought went down because nothing else was communicated (or it was lost in translation or no one remembers, we are only human).
The thoughts of creating a new guild had been building for quite a while, the issues with ouleg pretty much was the straw breaking the camels back, as well as while people were leveling in TBC the b team being ignored. I did not reply to anyone that day because I made a conscious decision not to. Any reason that I would have given that day would have been treated just like itâs being treated now 6 years later, just another excuse. There was deep seeded reasons to start Illusion and I probably have done the same thing if I was back in the same situation. I mainly posted so the readers of this blog can get the real story and not what was posted by kerulak, which makes me sound petty.
This came up a lot! I actually address it in the posts that follow. Hopefully youâll continue to read that things get a lot worse before they get better as I figure out all the other problems and just how in the hell I am supposed to address them.
At that exact moment in time, I had an officer (thatâs you @Jared_Cook), who had been left in charge by Gutrippa, walk without any discussion before hand, only to get an off-the-cuff excuse about âno gratzâ to sate me. We never actually sat down and had a discussion, pre or during, about the reasoning behind the exodus. I wrote that post based on the info you gave me. Itâs definitely been helpful to hear the real reasoning after the fact, but itâs important for the readership to understand what was going through my head at that moment:
Holy fucking shit, my warlock officer is leaving, not responding, and taking people with him!!! FFFUUUUâŚ
I can definitely bring clarity to the A-Team/B-Team situation. Itâs touched on lightly in Streamlining the Approach and Paying the Entrance Fee. But make no mistake, as I wrote in âStreamliningâŚâ
B-team was vital, as it produced more quality players to be inducted into A-team
That was always and forever the plan. It justâŚwasnât handled well. More accurately, it was handled the best way we knew how, at the time.
I think I can bring better clarity to that in another revision to Blizzardâs First Mistake, which I currently feel isnât entirely accurate, but is the best place to address the 2nd exodus, as it is the same post that I finally come to the realization that players who commit different levels of effort need to be acknowledged. Treating all my players equally not only produced a group of hardcore players that resented the casuals for their mistakes and âdragging the guild downâ, it gave the casuals a false sense of mistreatment; that we were purposefully butchering âtheirâ raids for our own benefit â when, of course, the success and longevity of the guild revolved around progression and how well we kept up with truly hardcore raiding guilds. The further we fell back, the greater risk we ran of losing our core members.
Of course, this clarity doesnât speak to the issue of an officer put in a role of responsibility, that simply decided to walk one day. I expected officers to carry themselves professionally; to set the example for others. And as issues arose, they would bring them to us as they saw fit, so we could mitigate. But, just as I hadnât yet set expectations for our raiders (both of low and of high levels of commitment to the guild), I also hadnât set expectations of my officers.
Just to make sure weâre all on the same page, Gutrippa was the warlock officer in vanilla, he designated Dreadlocker as his 2nd-in-command as we had so many folks back then, I encouraged each officer to pick a subordinate. Then, at the start of TBC, Gutrippa quit the game, so we handed the officership completely to Dreadlocker. Dreadlocker was in charge the day he left the guild and took of third of us with him. This is why the blog post is so important to the story. It wasnât just a random member walking away in silence, pissed off that I was mistreating B-team, it was an officer; an authority figure in DoD who was supposed to have the good of the guild as his priority, as opposed to his friends in B-team. That is ultimately the most important message that blog post needed to deliver.
Eacavissi took up the reins, post Dreadlocker.
In all reality shawn, The way TBC turned out for illusion was just fine for us, and I donât think we really could have impacted the 25 man DoD raids you were trying to put together. Seeing how blizzard has made the game easier and easier for the casual players, iâm glad I quit when I did. 25 mans being equal to 10 mans with the same mechanics⌠wtf is blizz thinking. There is a point where you just have to do what you think is right.
I think you and I can both agree on that, chief. Itâs been a long, hard fall from the glory days.