Knowing. Deciding. Raiding. Eating.
Lunchtime is one of the great times in the day. It interrupts the tedium of employment and allows for scrumptious eating (sometimes). Today I was set for Chinese food: General Tso’s Chicken, fried rice, crab rangoon… mmmmmmm. Then I walk past our kitchen area and someone is heating up an Italian dish and OMG I want Italian! Maybe. There’s a Noodles & Co. and their Parmesan Crusted Chicken Breast is pretty good. So now, I have to make a decision.
What I realize is that I do not like making decisions. I like knowing the answers.
Decisions are about consequences. Weighing benefits and costs. Answers are about facts. There is no relevant facts about lunch-I like both places and I will enjoy eating either. One costs more and will take longer to get, but the difference is negligible.
In WoW we face that same sort of issue. I like being the one that knows the answers, that knows the runs, that knows boss encounters and gearing, and, well, all of it. In that aspect, I think I lead raids well. I know the plan, I know the abilities we have available and I can communicate that.
But the other half of raiding, the deciding half, I hate handling. I hate putting the raid together because it is not a questions of knowing, but choosing. Is person A going to be useful in this raid? I can know the answer is "no," but the decision doesn’t stop there. Is there someone else who can fill the spot at all? What are the social consequences for passing them over or replacing them?
When the choices are made, we’re left with the consequences. When we have good results, that’s good, right? No one complains about getting more bosses killed or getting more epics. But what about when the consequences are terrible and you wipe over and over again on farm content and it isn’t because you don’t know how to do it, but because the choices made earlier are preventing you from doing it? How do you turn to your raid and your guild and say to some of them, "I don’t care what you think, I know you are not ready and bringing you again is going to hurt our chances to succeed?"
The StormSeekers has some exceptional people in its ranks, and some exceptional players. Some of those overlap. There is an increasingly widening gap between the top and the middle- Our efforts to move forward are being hit not by knowing how to do them- We’re not limited by answers- We’re restricted by choices and a guild culture that is not welcoming of the tough decisions we’re faced with. The culture itself being a choice we’re feeling the consequences of, the ripples and repercussions.
What the future holds for the StormSeekers, I have no idea. A lot of deciding needs to be done on both the leadership’s part and the members about what is important as individuals and as a group. We have made pretty big strides recently (three bosses in Zul’Aman, Lurker in SSC and Void Reaver in TK with Royal Steel, and completing Gruul’s Lair as a StormSeekers run (even if half the raid was out of guild)) and it seems a waste not to capitalize on those successes. The future for me holds Chinese food.
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