Someone posted an interesting question on my last post.

Do you think getting into Glyphs helped keep your interest in WoW – or did it facilitate and accelerate the burnout that left you disinterested? – S.F.

My first response is both.  My burn out was building for a while.  To give you a clear picture, I need to go way back and start from the beginning.

I started playing wow at the same time a few personal friends did.  The game was only 2-3 months old and we leveled together.  We started a few casual guilds and one of them took off at the end of original wow.  We would have a great time in our small group running ZG.  Many of the core had raided in BWL and found it relaxing in our environment.  I played a silent officer role but as relaxed as we were, I didn’t have to do much.

When BC hit our server was opened up to free transfers off to a low pop server.  Our server was home to Elitist Jerks and Goon Squad.  At the time it was over populated with hord, lagged, and had long queues to get on.  The transfer was easy for us.  We did lose a few good players but a few of them that did make the transfer still have ties to this guild.  Leveling on a low pop server was great.  You could just put your head down and quest.  Ganking was a non issue.  Spotting an alliance was rare.  Not only was it low pop, but alliance didn’t exist.

I remember gearing up for kara and the challenge that instance had at the time.  Some of those fights gave us so much trouble but we were able to pull together and figure them out.  I remember a few trash pulls that sent us to the graveyard numerous time.  We had fun as a group.  It wasn’t just the raiding, it was the group of people.  The guild had a lot of great energy at the time.  Recruitment was easy in that environment.  All they had to do was one run and they never left.

We were at that point where we had too many people for only 1 ten man group.  Instead of building just a 2nd team, we made 3.  We took a step back in progression because we did not have the final bosses down yet and we split our team up.  The 3 groups made great progress and all of them ended up clearing it about the same time.  I know a few of the group thought they had the weaker group, but we kept that in check and they showed us what they could do.  We were able to get a lot of people keyed for the next instance.

My silent role as a officer became less silent.  I was a key part of the conversations on managing the guild.  I also had a lot of influence on the loot system and ended up tweaking a mod to fit our needs.  We had several old time members keeping things running smooth.  As we moved into SSC I was transitioned into GM.  I was handed the GM spot because it was one of my friends that had it and he was taking a break.  He trusted that I would do a good job.  I felt like there were a few things I was great at and I know several things that I was not so great at.

I presented myself more as a dictator.  We do what I say.  I kept my official officers to a minimum.  I did have a few unofficial officers in officer chat.  While I presented myself as a dictator, the feedback I pulled from my officers was important.  I did keep too much control to myself.  I tried to handle all drama directly when I could and I coordinated raid spots.  Managing raid spots is a lot of work when done right.  Who sat reserves last time? Who got good loot last time? Who is points leader for the item they want in this raid?  Who is showing up late we need to save room for? Do I need more strong or weak raiders for this?  And when someone thought I sat them unfairly I could list exactly everyone of those considerations I did for them to sit reserves.  People became aware of just how fair I was making the groups and I gained a lot of trust from that.

As we rose to #3 on the server we ran head first into the low pop issue.  We were done with Kara but to get new raiders, we had to gear them up.  When we progressed too slow in spots, people would move up to one of the 2 better guilds.  The quality of players at each tier of content was very staggered.  We were #3 on the server with only 3 bosses in SSC killed.  #1 was clearing BT.  It was a struggle to constantly rebuild the guild over and over.  Recruitment was my weakness as a GM.

Then 1 week before my son was born,  I transfered the guild to another server and I left the game for about 6 months.  I did a poor job of handing the GM over to someone else.  But they were able to pick the pieces up and continue on. They were able to do well without me.