So I’ve just offered you a spot as an officer in my guild and now I’ve asked you to sleep on it before you answer me. What things would you consider before answering me?

Below is a list of questions I think any member should answer before taking on a leadership role in an established guild:

• Do I intend to make a long term commitment to this game?
• Do I intend to make a long term commitment to this guild?
• What will my responsibilities be?
• Do I want to make a long term commitment to these responsibilities?
• How are my views inline with that of the current leadership core?
• How are my views different from that of the current leadership core?
• What strengths do I have to bring to this guild in a leadership role?
• Which of my weaknesses might affect my ability to hold a leadership role?
• Is my GM aware of these weaknesses?
• Am I willing to commit to being a good example for my guildmates?
• Can I establish a good working relationship with the other members of the leadership core?
• How do the other officers interact with the GM(s)?
• Is that how I want to interact with the GM(s)?
• Do I respect my GM(s)?
• Why is the GM looking for a new officer?
• Does your idea of the authority you should have as an officer line up with your GM(s)’s?
• Does your idea of the role you would play in the leadership core line up with your GM(s

What things would you consider?

Long Boring Intro:
I have a secret. A long time ago, I was a “casual” player. For about a year I had a real life priority that took enough of my time to prevent me from raiding with any regularity. In that time I was part of a pvp team (where I met my partner in crime! Mikedabutcha) and then part of a real life friend guild. (You had to know someone in real life who was in the guild, A la Kevin Bacon). Once my real life priority had passed, I found myself too bored to play casually and sought out a raiding home, but I’ve always stayed in touch with that real life group of friends. Recently one of those members e-mailed me and let me know they were considering “raiding” and wanted advice. What is “raiding” and where might they find a good home? I e-mailed them back a specific response, and then upon re-reading it decided some of the advice I’d given him could be generalized and may be interesting to others.
The better player myth:
Intrinsically, dedicated raiders aren’t any better or worse than their casual counterparts. Rather than a reflection of skill, dedicated raiding is reflection of effort. Most people do become better with time and effort, but I’ve seen some really terrible players in some really good gear. In fact, in some cases I’ve been responsible for putting some good gear on bad players.

The “raider” mindset:
In another post, I’ve already talked about how the commitment to raiding, alters a players view of the game, so I won’t rehash that here. The advantage of this mindset is that you feel more involved in the game, you are able to see more things and the encounters do challenge you to master your class. The disadvantages are the you have to make raiding a priority in your life, you may end up playing with people you don’t necessarily enjoy outside of raids, and gaming time becomes a little more stressful.

Defining your commitment:
Often times in discussions we’ll put players into boxes: “Casual,” “Hardcore,” “Elitist,” “Scrub.” But in reality it’s not that simple. Rather than black or white there is a grayscale of levels of commitment to raiding and ability. So while considering raiding, consider realistically how much time do you want to spend playing this game? How much time can you spare from your everyday lifestyle? Remember that you are committing to more than just raiding, but also to being prepared for raids. A good rule of thumb to consider is that you’ll need about 15 minutes of preparation time for every hour of time you spend in a raid.

Finding a guild that matches your expectations:
This isn’t always easy. In fact, it was so hard for me that I ended up making my own guild. One of the easiest tricks to finding a guild that raids when you want to is to just type “/who Serpentshrine Cavern” (Or whatever zone you’re interested in raiding) and note the guilds of the people who are in that zone. Do that for a few days and make a list of the guild names you see. Once you have your list, do a search on the internet for “GuildName WoW Servername” or ask a member for the guild’s website. The first thing you should check is that their raid expectations match up to what you want to commit. Second, check their available information and see if their culture seems like the kind of culture you want from a guild.

Impressing the guild you want to join:
Once you’ve decided you want to join them, you have to explain to them why they should want you. Take a look at their raiders who play the same class/spec that you are playing in the armory and see how they have gemmed or enchanted their gear. Take a moment to evaluate your own character and used the “find upgrades” button to see if there is something easy you can do to make your character stronger. If this guild is killing bosses you haven’t seen yet, read information about those bosses. Remember in an interview, the recruiter is checking you to see if it’s worth making a time investment in you. The more things you can do to show them that you are investing time in yourself and your own progression, the more likely they are to feel that time invested in you and your progression is worthwhile.

The advent of Sunwell has unsettled the raiding scene on Medivh, the number one progression guild on our server has collapsed and a new raiding guild has appeared on the scene. With new content on the horizon, my co-gm, officers and I find ourselves with the need to re-focus as we prepare to enter and conquer Sunwell.

When we formed up we knew we wanted to be an end game raiding guild. We defined the raiding commitment we required from our raiders. We defined our loot system, our member expectations, how we distribute our resources and picked our officers. Somewhere along the way we went from just trying to get ourselves established and organized to being one of the well respected guilds on the server. In that transition we stopped focusing so much on where we were going and settled into a routine.

Our biggest challenge is that with about 4 months of BT/Hyjal raiding and only one week of a full clear of both, we are slightly under the gear tuning for Sunwell content. Our current loot system as been serviceable for our 9 months, but really does a nice job of distributing loot fairly equally among our raiders. Some officers and members are in favor of ensuring we do more to gear up our main tank and maybe a few other of our highest level attenders to allow us to catch the gear gap for Sunwell more easily. This and a few other suggested changes, are causing us to question, how far is too far to go to ensure rapid progress.

Our raiding guild isn’t like the stereotypical raiding guild. Anyone who has read my other posts, knows how much I focus on the humanity of my raiders. I believe in loyalty and I know the best way to get respect is to give it. When my co-gm and I created this guild, we sat down and talked long and hard about what we wanted it to be and how we wanted it to differ from other raiding guilds. One thing that has never changed is that we want to carry ourselves and treat our raiders and server mates with dignity and kindness.

It’s become readily apparent that in addition to having fostered the environment we wanted, we’ve also gathered a collection of highly skilled players, who are capable of doing more than we have. Some of this can be attributed to our late start to TBC raiding, but some of it is also, that in an effort to be fair and keep all of our members involved in this guild, we are spreading resources equitably, but not always where they will have the largest impact in our raiding success.

The reason we’ve stood behind this policy is that my co-gm and I believe having a strong bench is what’s allowed us to have nearly uninterrupted raiding for 9 months. (We took a week off for Christmas and one night for the Super Bowl) but now, I’m coming to question if this is the best direction for our guild.

While it can be unsettling as a leader to stop and examine something that has been a part of our guild since the beginning, I believe that continuing something because “it’s what we’ve always done” leads to stagnation. Every good leader needs to take a moment every now and again and examine where they are leading their guild and how the needs of their guild have changed. Regardless of what we decide, I’m certain my guild and it’s leadership will be stronger because we’ve taken the time to examine what would otherwise be routine.

2.4 Came out. The world did not fall apart but the majority of my server is on Sunwell isle. We’ve opened phase 2 and I have my phoenix pet. (Yeah I know it’s girly and doesn’t help my stats, guess what I like it anyway.)

My guild entered SWP 25, but it appears to be be tuned for a slightly higher gear level than we are at the moment. We’re back in our farm content and we’ll save our learning nights for after we’ve picked up the weeks farmed gear.

I’m excited by the patch. It was nice to be able to say, if only for a day “We beat WoW” but I’m excited to have new content to work on.

Two unrelated topics; one post! It’s like getting two malformed rambles for the price of one!

We beat Illidan last night. It felt not so epic. Our guild took longer to learn Leo than Illidan. He’s the final boss. He singlehandedly brought the well of eternity back. He’s ILLIDAN and he’s a pussy.

Beating Illidan:
Step 1) Listen to Lorelol (Akama is a pussy)
Step 2) Find tank able to shield block on command (<3 Mikedabutcha)
Step 3) Kill Parasites
Step 4) Find 2 tanks able to dodge lasers (No Mr. Bond, I expect you to stand very still while these lasers come slowly towards you)
Step 5) Spread out (Don’t stand next to Illidan)
Step 6) Kill Demons
Step 7) Listen to Lorelol (I hate Maiv)
Step Collect loot

On the other hand, the whole thing made me kinda sentimental. My Co-gm and I have been through a lot together. I was there for his first Rag kill and he helped me through my first AV. We built this guild that went from Kara to Illidan in a little less than 9 months.

When we killed him we had 10 of our original raiders from Kara still raiding with us. In our 9 month together we’ve seen people get married, had a baby born, had a new job, get fired from a job, be hospitalized, raid from the hospital, graduate college, fall in love, break up, get hit by a car (and raided that night), move out of their mom’s house, move into their mom’s house, move across the country, lose a grandparent, lose a best friend and lose a pet. We’ve seen people come and go, but through it all, this guild has remained something that I’m very proud to be a part of. So we beat wow, just in time for 2.4 to come out. I’m looking forward to conquering those new challenges together.

On the other topic, yesterday I had a stranger whisper me. She told me I was an inspiration to her as a female GM. That I was a role model for female gamers. For some reason I was very put off by this.

I’ve been playing online video games for almost a decade (I’m about to turn 26 and I started when I was 16) and in that time I’ve never really had a role model in a video game. Certainly I’ve met some people along the way that have taught me some game mechanics and some things about leadership. I’ve always been observant about social mechanics of the games I played. When I first played I quickly discovered female gamers were a rarity and, if I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, I should leave my gender a mystery to all but those that knew me very well. As time has gone by and female gamers have become a much larger percentage of gamers, and I no longer mask my gender.

I believe I approach GMing differently because of my gender, and that’s part of why I write here. But, I’m not trying to be a role model for female gamers and certainly not a part of some sort of feminist movement online. If you want a feminist role model take up with Marie Curie, Susan B. Anthony, or Amber Reeves.

Female gamers, you want to look up to me as some sort of role model, this is my advice. Stop looking at other people and start looking at yourself. Go, play your game. Play it well or suck at it. Carry yourself with dignity. Demand to be evaluated for who you are and how you play, not your possession of tits. Ignore people that can’t or won’t get over your gender. Oh, and if you whore yourself out for pixels, you’re still a whore. I hope the pixelated loot can comfort your damaged dignity. As for, I’m going to keep doing what I do. If you wanna respect that, go right ahead, but I’d rather you go do something you can respect yourself for.