Lately I get a sense that a lot of people aren’t satisfied with the way things are going in their raiding guilds. The WoW ladies livejournal always has posts about people not fitting in with their guild, feeling like the way they raid isn’t the right fit for them, and asking what they can do about it. I’ve bailed on guilds in the past, and there are times in BoO when raiding gets me pretty damn grumpy (my poor boyfriend had to deal with me bitching thunderously a few nights ago, and he doesn’t even play this game).
So what causes raid dissatisfaction?
Personally, I think the big culprit these days is not having everyone on the same page, goal-wise. In a raiding guild you’re all working together to accomplish a goal, but when some of you have a different goal in mind than others, there’s a pretty clear disconnect and some people aren’t going to be happy. I think that the introduction of achievements and hardmode raiding has really led to two distinctly different ways of approaching raiding – it used to be that you raided to progress, and that was the goal. Pretty much everyone who raided could say that they wanted to get further through the content with fewer wipes. These days you can have a group who are in that camp and want to see all the bosses downed and hooray, goal met! But then there are those who want to up the challenge and toggle on hardmodes, because for them that accomplishment is what the raiding game’s all about. And of course, there’s always been those who are just there for loot; a steady flow of purples is enough to keep them happy, and when it’s not coming any more, neither are they. If you have people from all mindsets in your guild, there’s going to be friction between them. People who want a challenge will feel that they’re being held back by those who don’t, because if they do get the opportunity to attempt hardmodes and fail, people who weren’t too keen on doing them in the first place will press for giving up and moving on. Those who just want to progress through normal levels of difficulty won’t understand why they’re expected to help the others who want to do hardmodes, and spend their time and gold on repairs after wiping. Things will go more smoothly and with less resentment when everyone makes it clear what their goals are, and finds a like-minded group of people to accomplish them with.
The other big issue is attitude. Sometimes you can tell when a guild member doesn’t want to be there for the raid – they might be very vocal about it, or their performance might subtly reflect that they’d rather be doing something else. When your heart’s not in it, you don’t give it your all; when I’m having a bad night and feel like I’m there out of obligation, I know I’m off my game. And while you might feel like you should be there out of obligation, the more you let us know that you wish you were doing anything but raiding, the more the morale is going to go down. We all hate wiping, but complaining about it and saying that you don’t want to stay through it doesn’t make it any less likely to keep happening. I’d go so far to say that complaining about the wipes makes them more likely to keep happening, because everyone else wants to get out of the raid just as much as the complainer, so they don’t have to listen to the whining any more.
The aspect of the attitude problem that gets me more than anything is how people approach criticism. I’m not saying that you should never criticize your raid members, because we all make mistakes and have room for improvement, but the way that you approach that makes a huge difference on the reception. Politely offering suggestions is cool, and usually will be well received by someone who is genuinely interested in their performance. We have had newer players who have improved a lot by talking with the more seasoned ones about the details of their classes, which wouldn’t have happened if we’d just yelled “why do you suck so much?” and replaced them every time. If someone were to give me tips on how to improve my healing (and by that, I do not mean telling me to beacon one target and heal another when I’m already doing it, because honestly, telling someone the core basics of how to play their class is just insulting) I would welcome it, because I’m not one of the guys at ElitestJerks, and I know that there’s probably more that I could do. If we’re struggling on a boss with wipe after wipe, politely suggesting a different strategy will go miles farther than “Guys, why can’t we do this, I know PuGs who can handle this shit, so why can’t we?”.
What will really hurt your raiding core? Forgetting that we are all a team, and that you have 9/24 other people relying on you. When you sign up for a raid and show up late or not at all, you’ve hurt your team. There will be bitter feelings about it, especially when you don’t give any excuses. When you rant about the fact that you’re not getting loot and you don’t know why you even bother any more, you’re hurting your team. When you take the negative route and call everyone morons instead of offering constructive criticism, you are hurting the team. When everyone doesn’t come together to make a team effort on a regular basis, it’s the surest way to have the whole thing crumble.







