As I was slipping back into real life I found myself sitting down to write on my book. It’s been a while so I chose to re-read a few sections to get my mind back in the game. I’m out of practice so my mind was wandering rather staying on the topic at hand. I thought I’d share the results of that wandering with you.

• I wonder how many officers a typical guild/clan has? Do you think it scales with number of members.
• A lot of these sections remind me of the functions of a Human Resources department, is there room for a post drawing comparisons between the two? Is there a benefit to this comparison?
• That guy that said I write about guild leading like it’s a small nation, should I lighten up in my presentation here? I find most of my writing takes an air of professionalism for the topic. Why would someone bother to read something that it didn’t seem like I’d addressed the matter as something of import?
• I wonder what the comparative age of guild masters to the average age of their guild is?
• Why can’t I see the google notebook Matt sent? I wonder if it’s just me or everyone he sent it to.
• You think anyone is really going to buy a book about guild leading? Maybe no one has written one before because no one wants one.
• Tonight’s the last raid before the weekend for the guild… I wonder how it’ll go tonight. I need to go over our twins strat this weekend….
• I should use the polls on the blog to get some informal statistics about the things I wonder about general guild leadership…
• hmmm this will be another post without pictures, I’m pretty sure that means Matt’s going to hyjack my blog and get Wyn to retroactively add pictures to these posts.
• My pug has put my legs to sleep, how can something weighing 25 pounds keep me weighing at least 10 pounds more than that (=P) in place?
• I should move the dog, and go to the kitchen for lunch…. what should I have for lunch, I think there’s a leftover wrap in the fridge, mmmmm wrap…..
• I still have over a thousand entries on my blog reader, maybe I shouldn’t try to go back to working today maybe I should take a day to catch up on that and rest before putting myself back to work, clearly my mind is not on topic and you have to be a good reader to be a good writer….
• Oooo I still have to work on the new guild website… I was going to use that to write my chapter on guild websites and the series I wanted to write for the blog about websites… I think that technically makes it count as work on all three things…..didn’t I have a guild that said I could use their website too for that blog series… have to check my blog idea notebook… you know I haven’t checked that thing since before I stepped away, it doesn’t do me any good if I don’t use it..

And with that, I beg your leave to go work on the new guild website. Let me know if you guys liked this  format or hated it. It’s atypical of my writing style, but like the chicklette said maybe I need to lighten up some and try new things.

I read a few business leadership blogs. Not all of what they talk about directly translates to MMO leadership, but sometimes there’s a gem. Today I was inspired by Rhett Laubach of Personal Leadership Insight and his 10List. In the same spirit, I present you with my 10 Reasons I love being a GM list.

1) The people - As an online leader I’ve had a chance to meet and get to know some amazing people.

2) The thrill of accomplishment - Accomplishing a task in an MMO is always a thrill, looking around and realizing these people wouldn’t have come together to do it without your efforts definitely magnifies that thrill for me.

3) Constant Motivation - Having a bad day? Frustrated by real life? Doesn’t matter, people are counting on me. It’s a great motivation to “Get a helmet,” or get over life’s little hiccups. (My Pally Officer, Sultan Fantastic, frequently says “Life’s rough get a helmet.”)

4) Feeling of empowerment - While I certainly don’t get to do what I want on a whim, I more empowered than the average player to help enact the changes I want to see.

*

5) Never, ever having to pug - Seriously, I haven’t been in the LFG channel in a year. It’s wonderful.

6) Rarely having people question you when you say you’re busy - Ever been repeatedly asked by a guild mate to run them through an instance? Yeah that doesn’t happen to me. If I let one of my members know I’m working on something for the guild, that’s generally sufficient.

7) Setting Behavioral Standards - Even unintentionally a GM sets the standard for what’s acceptable behavior with their own actions, and intentionally with what they allow. This generally means if it pisses me off, it doesn’t fly.

There is always something to do - I have never logged in and wondered what I should do today. Something is always waiting.

9) The opportunity to grow out of game skills - In addition to working to master my class and overcome new raid bosses, I’m also challenged to develop my interpersonal skills, communication techniques and my organizational tools, all of these things come with me to the real world.

10) The opportunity to help others grow - In my role as GM I’ve had the opportunity to make connections with other people and help them develop both in game skills and some out of game skills. Nothing made me more proud than when one of our raiders found a job in his dream career path and had to step away from his raiding commitment but said that he’d take the lessons our guild had taught him with him to his career and he knew it would make him more successful.

When I first saw this Mr. Laubach’s list I thought this would be a short post I could have ready before my company came over. 4 hours later and with the help of my company, (Hi Gumi!) it turns out it wasn’t as quick as I thought it would be. That being said, taking the time to write down these things has really helped me focus on what makes me so passionate about my guild and good leadership. I’d encourage all of you to sit down and try this. What 10 things do you love about what you put your time into?

*Most of the pictures I use aren’t of people I know, but that one IS my puppy. I know it’s poor quality, it’s still my puppy.

The Guild’s Birthday is in four days. This was already an incredible milestone for us and one I’ve been eagerly awaiting. We have an in-game event scheduled titled “Operation Shock Monkey” (That’s all I’m telling you until I can provide you with screenshots lest I ruin the surprise). We’re making T-shirts for the guild to order from Cafepress if they want. I’ve put a fair amount of energy into both of these things. What I didn’t know is they had a surprise for me.

Last night I was taken out to dinner to celebrate a personal milestone. When we arrived at my favorite restaurant I was escorted to a table with a few people I already knew and a few strangers. I looked closer and realized wait, I’ve seen these people before, on our guild’s real life picture thread. Several of my guildmates from Virginia as well as one from Ohio got together to surprise me. They’d somehow kept this secret from me through a month’s worth of planning.

It was incredible to sit around a table with these people, most of whom had been with the guild since close to day one and just enjoy each other. We talked about game stuff, real life and just got to know each other. In fact we had so much fun that the restaurant closed and we moved the party back to my house, until 2 am.

Highlights of the night

• The surprise of discovering their plot.
• Trying to sort out real life names, and settling for character names instead. (That’s right I answered to Auz in public, which wasn’t as bad as “Fizwidget” or “Gumibear”)
• The Moonkin “Cawing” at the waitress. (Poor dear, but I left her a nice tip)
• A DPS warrior pulling threat on a set of crutches.
• Our offtank discussing his need to generate more threat and then pointing at three of our warlocks and saying because of you bastards!
• Telling our favorite Mikedabutcha stories. (Missed you Mike, but the nieces are cute enough to make up for it.)
• Discussing what would happen if everyone told the REAL reason they caused a wipe.
• The fiasco of getting everyone from the restaurant to my house. (Let’s just say, if you want directions from Auz, ask for them ahead of time. No you take a right, wait a left. I don’t know)
• Hearing their stories of previous guilds and discovering that they really valued what we have going on.
• Explaining to one of our guildmate’s girlfriend that I was his other woman, and I was sorry I took him away for 20 hours a week.
• Hearing from the same girlfriend how Sunday night dates were EXPRESSLY forbidden as that was progression night.

It was an incredibly geeky night and the most fun I’ve had in a while. I cannot believe that these guys put so much time and effort into surprising me. I often take a step back and look at my guild amazed. It’s incredible that what started as a conversation in my living room with two of my best friends turned into this. The people we’ve drawn and the things we’ve done astound me. There are times I look back and think to myself, how did I convince people of this caliber to follow me? Like a parent, I feel like I’ve raised something better and stronger than myself and I couldn’t be more proud. Thanks guys, the effort you’ve made and the way you made me feel last night, reminds me WHY I put so much time into this.

Sorry for being quiet, it turns out that away from this mystical land of intarwebz there are demons that via for your time and attention. I just faced down an elite one, and as I’m a holy priest (and I was caught in my healing gear) all I could really do was put my shadow word pain on it and heal myself and wait for it to tire of me.

So aside from the intro that probably means I’ve been reading too much Ratters, we were able to test my Brutalus healing strat Monday night. Like any good strat it took some tweaking. Like Runycat suggested, I pulled in one additional resto druid and tasked him with HoTs on the Burn victims (The holy pally and resto druid were then put into a team I called “The Burn Unit”) and when possible toss some HoTs on the active tank or on a transition the next tank. My pally IS amazing, but the burn damage ended up being a little more than he could handle on his own (which honestly was the most presumptive part of my strat.) Once that was in place, the healing strat looked pretty stable. We had some wipes due to healers getting used to what to expect from Stomp damage, some due to tanks figuring out the best time to taunt, some due to soakers that didn’t understand Burn plus refreshing your Meteor Slash = dead DPS. (It’s the increased fire damage for those of you who also don’t read closely) But at the end of the night we were getting solid attempts with stable healing, which to me means a successful healing strat.

But Auz you said there would be evaluation! All I see is carebear happy stuff, where’s the numbers. Well I’ll be honest, when the raid’s successful I don’t dip so deep into the numbers. I did wander through every pre-wipe death in WWS and figure out what happened. (THANK GOD DEATH REPORTS ARE BACK!) What I saw bore out my thought to bring in the druid for burn HoTs. I’ve found that if my tank healers don’t chain cast through Stomp, the tanks won’t live. My Disc priest did a nice job making sure the two of us weren’t synced the whole night. Inspiration was on the tank about 90% of the night, leading credence to my raid leaders’s and my inspiration math. I’m currently trying to decide how to make that math available on the intarwebz. If I keep feeling lazy, you’ll just a get a link to spreadsheet you’ll have to download.

In even better news, Illidan finally dropped his car door for our main tank, so our attempts tomorrow will be even easier for our healers

So I’ve hesitated to post this for fear of being wrong and looking like an idiot, but I’ve decided this is part of what I do as a GM and maybe it’ll help someone. Also, after singing to you guys, I can’t really embarrass myself much further.

We finally killed the big blue menace on Tuesday and I’ve spent the past few days building our Brutalus healing strategy. I’ve looked over kill videos, WWS reports, and strategies that include listing of the boss abilities. I know that at my guild’s place in progression I could jack someone else’s strat and do no actual thinking for myself, but my EQ roots make coming up with my own plan a matter of pride. Also no one else knows my healers as well as I do, so I doubt their strats would be as strong as my own for my guild.

So here’s the plan for our guild’s initial Brutalus attack:
1 CoH Priest and 1 Shaman to heal Meteor Slash
1 Pally to heal Burn targets (With help from the meteor slash shaman at the final tick)
1 Holy priest, 1 Disc priest, 1 pally and 1 shaman on the MTs.

The shaman and I are going to spend some quality time together figuring out what rank of Lesser Healing Wave he can cast continuously for 6 minutes (fully raid buffed). In the fight he will stand still and continuously cast Lesser Healing Wave. The holy priest will be casting max rank Greater Heal to land in time with the main hand weapon swing (both 2.5 seconds, coincidence I think not!), and keep renew up and the Disc priest thinks on his feet and will alternate his heals but I anticipate at 4 casts in 15 second average. The pally is a Holy Light spammer.

The heart of this plan is maxing our inspiration/ancestral fortitude uptime to counterbalance Stomp. I’ve done some math with my raid leader and determined that with this configuration we can keep inspiration/ancestral fortitude on our tanks 94% of the time.*

So, that’s my initial healing plan. As my raid leader buddy says, “no good plan survives contact with the enemy.” I’ll check in after our first night’s attempts and let you know what worked and what didn’t work.

*I found that in my scouring of the intarwebz there is no Inspiration/Ancestral Fortitude uptime calculator or formula published so I had to make my own. It’s not perfect but it’s the best estimation I could put together without delving into derivatives. Using the math my raid leader and I put together I will be creating a calculator in the hopes of preventing someone else from having to do all that math.