Operation Just Say No To Burnout is going well – ya can tell by the fact I’m not whinging on about how burned out I feel. I rolled a baby nelf on another server to keep a friend company – I’m boggling at bit at the boob jiggle. You’ll just be getting on with your business, killing small fluffy animals for the sake of THE BALANCE, and then it’s like your nelf will turn round and go “Hey, you’re probably a man back there, here’s a special something for you…” Well … thanks for that, Blizzard. It’s nice to know you care. Or something. I always suspected there was something dodgy about the Alliance. You wouldn’t get a noble cow doing that sort of thing. And I know, I know … shoulda rolled a dorf, but I don’t have the dorf starting area about fifty seven times so I thought I’d better branch (gettit) out.
The Friday Night Tardrun is making decent progress into Ulduar – and it’s six monkeys and five bananas worth of fun. I love it. I call it the Tardrun, by the way, with all due self-irony – it’s just I suspect that’s rather the perception of us within some, but not at all, quarters of the guild. Trying to do Ulduar, lol, go to ICC noobs. We are not actually tards but we are learners – all of us in our different ways, some are learning to RL, some are learning to teach, some are learning to tank heal (that would be me), some are learning to raid, and all of us are learning to work together. Of course, I over-gear the place massively and so do a couple of our DPS but our tanks tend to be appropriately geared and some of the folks and alts on the run do get genuine upgrades from the drops in there – so it doesn’t feel like an entirely futile exercise.
We don’t exactly progress at lightning speeds but we do progress – and a large part of the reason we don’t progress as quickly as we could is that we take long detours into stories about fish, and make jokes about bonsai trees. But that’s okay, and it’s genuinely nice to be in a run where you can do that sort of thing, and it has a value of its own. I can see why such silliness doesn’t have a place in an ICC progression run, and I’m not sure I’d want it there, but there are different types and ways of raiding – and For Fun (and for BONSAI) is an entirely legitimate one.
Of course, although Tardcore is pretty established, we have our outliers and for the first half of our venture we had a healer who thought he was The Shit. For starters, he was too leet to actually talk about healing with me – more than anything these days, I loathe and despise the “just heal anything lol” mentality. I don’t know if it’s connected to the trying issue or what. And I know the holy grail of healing is the so-called wordless healing whereby you know what the other person is doing even before they’ve done it themselves and although I think I’m getting there with a couple of guildies with whom I heal regularly there is ultimately nothing to be gained by spannering through something rather thinking about it for 5 seconds and doing it well.
It’s possible I’m just Not As Good At Healing As I Could Be but although, naturally, I’m keeping an eye on all bars at all times in case of an emergency I like to have a focus. I would argue it makes me a better healer, not just because my concentration is less stretched but because you don’t have situations like this arising:
Let’s say the OT and a Random DPS both dip dangerously low on health – in the “just heal anything lol” approach you HAVE to prioritise the OT because without her the raid goes splat. So chances are every healer is going to start piling heals on the OT and the poor old DPS goes splat. And that’s NEEDLESS. That’s a dead DPS for no actual advantage. It’s not a sacrifice you had to make for the good of the raid, it’s a sacrifice to your own laziness and vanity. If one of the raid healers has been designated “keeping an eye on the OT”, the other raid healers are free to heal that DPS and the raid as a whole benefits.
Just heal anything lol leads to BAD HEALING. And I hate it. It means that everyone has the same priority system (tank, OT, other healers, top DPS, rest of the DPS) which means that there are some folks who inevitably bite it when they don’t have to.
Anyway, so not only did Leet Healz decide we didn’t actually need to heal properly on this raid but on our third attempt at Freya he started whinging about how he’d facerolled this in worse gear. And I hit the fucking wall. I mean, seriously, what is the point of saying that to a group of learners, who have already made it quite explicit why, and under what terms, they are in Ulduar. Way to go, you prince among men. Why don’t you just yell YOU SUCK at us and starting throwing monkey poo? What the hell is wrong with people? Seriously?! I hate the way a certain calibre of player will do anything they can to distance themselves from failure. If your self-esteem is so bound up in being able to down Freya on the first attempt, YOU NEED HELP. Like the cockweasel who starts FFSing two seconds after a wipe, all he was interested in doing was separating himself from the rest of us – i.e. were a bunch a sucky noobs, and he was awesome. Thankfully he fucked off not long after this – and hopefully died in fire on his way to fridge for a beer.
This ties into something else I’ve been vaguely thinking about raiding – there is insufficient, hmm, respect isn’t quite the right word, acknowledgement for the learning process. Now, it’s possible I am just a tard, but I reckon it takes me three attempts to get a fight down, unless there’s something super-complicated going on. Hodir, I think, took me four-five, and I can’t remember whether I danced on my third or fourth attempt. It doesn’t matter how many vids you watch or strats you read unless it’s utterly simplistic (why hello Noth, fancy seeing you here), I stand by my three attempts. The first attempt is familiarisation – oh so that’s why the lightning is coming from, oh so those are the pools of slime the vid was talking about and so on so forth. And you’ll probably die because you weren’t sure quite how far to kite the eyebeams, or where to drag the spore, or where to get out of the deathgoo. The second time you’ll know what’s going on but something unpredictable will happen. The goo will spawn in a slightly different place, you’ll get the debuff, whatever – which likely means you’ll die again. And the third time the other slightly unpredictable thing will happen – and you might do it or you might wipe. But from attempts three onwards you’ll probably be able to survive – and understanding and confidence will set in around attempts four to five.
The same tends to be true of Tardraid. We tend to down the bosses on our third attempt – and we tend to do it textbook (long live Tardraid!). I like it when things go textbook because I’m obsessive like that. I’d rather wipe one more time and then do it perfectly with everybody understanding than spanner through messily because you got lucky or because your tank or your healer was over-geared.
I wish there was a greater culture in raiding that allowed for this process. The first time poke my nose into Festergut (not literally, that would be icky) I wiped us three times. The first because both spores appeared in the ranged and the RL told me to run forward into the melee (despite the fact it should have been him) and I didn’t go far enough to get the tanks in the inoculation range. The second because I got the spore again and, having being confused the first time, pegged it towards the melee when I didn’t need to. And the third because I hadn’t quite realised how much tank healing was needed and the tank fell over. The fourth time we did it though – and the air of celebration was largely overwhelmed by a secondary sense of general irritation that we’d had to wipe three times, waiting for the stupid priest to stop being dumb and couldn’t he learn any fucking faster please.
I think because learning, and the vulnerability associated with it, is made so uncomfortable in WoW as a whole, once we are among the learned, we are eager to distance ourselves from times when we weren’t. So ultimately once you’ve downed a boss, you’ve always been able to down a boss, and it becomes harder and harder to remember a time when you couldn’t.
I suppose one of the things I really value about tardraid is that it is perhaps one of the few situations in WoW in which fucking up is not only forgiven but accepted as an inevitable, and even valuable, step on the journey.
The bit of this that really strikes home with me is your paragraph about it taking time to learn a boss.
I can't do it first try.
Well, it's a rarity. I am usually so bewildered by whatever it is that's going on around me, I simply can't. Usually by the third or 4th try not only have I worked out what's going on with the boss, I've worked out what I've got to do. I find especially with positioning fights, it can take me even longer. Rotface, for example, went down for only the second time this week.
I am quietly sure that the first 3 wipes were at least partially my fault.
But then the last try, I'd worked out what I needed to do, where I needed to stand, to get myself so I could not suicide the rest of us. And he went down.
Everyone learns at different levels, and I don't know anybody that gets everything first try. Occasionally there are those people that miraculously pick up strategies or fights or what have you – I quite enjoy deathwhisper myself because I like nipping out of the death and decay, and I love WG'ing those in it cos it makes me feel smug I have this awesome spell that will cover the bit that just got pinched from their health bar.
But what matters is being in an environment where you don't mind going; "oh…oh…wait NOW I get it!!!" And everyone calls you a tard but it's meant lovingly because they know full well they caused three wipes on the gunship by not jumping back across the ship quick enough, because they forgot to hotkey their rocket pack.
My recent post Apologies…again
I actually think most people take about 3 times to nail a boss fight – and I think it's foolish to pretend otherwise. But then I guess it depends if you expect to work towards a holistic understanding of the fight (as I do) or whether you want to just function for your own corner of it. Also some fights just suit some people better than others – one of my blind spots is those bloody not one but two worms. I am always getting myself paralysed or set on fire and I HATE it. But some fights that other people find really tricky I'm cool with – I even enjoy Hodir, can you believe. *mad*
The Ulduar raid when I was healing was so much fun and it's such a wonderful raid I really dont mind revisiting it again and again. I'm still kinda bitter that we skipped Yoggy to move onto the shithole that is TotC. I'd love to see the end boss and when "Tardraid" eventually makes it there, I'll be signing up rapido!
My recent post H for Heroic
I think the problem with Ulduar is that some of have the luxury of saying "Oooh, it's great and shiny and I could happily visit again and again" and some poor bastards spent last summer visiting it "again and again"
Also doing that place must have been a fecking nightmare when you couldn't extend the raid lockout. Think how long it takes us on average to down four bosses (about four hours, ahem) – we'd never get to Yogg in a million and 80 years.
But, yeah, it was awesome to have you that time – there's a slightly sadistic pleasure to watch people getting their head round healing…
I was one of those doing it again and again back when it was the current content
And once everyone knew what was going on, we could steam through the keepers. We stopped doing optional bosses, mind you, Once people start getting to grips with how stuff works and what they've got to do, I can see the Tardraid pooning a lot more than just 4 bosses and even if it takes an age to get to Yoggy, it'll be more than worth it when he's dead 
My recent post H for Heroic
Oh, how I envy Tardraid…..
My recent post More Multi-boxing…
It is enviable – I'm very grateful we have it. I suppose it's the kind of thing you can *only* put together if you don't know the content though. I can't imagine want to tardraid ICC-10 in a year's time for example.
Look at me being envious of your guild. this is the look [ ] Right there. Sounds great
And I completley agree on the whole "heal everything lol" hatred you have. On farm content (when I am healing, if im not healing i STFU about what the healers are doing… maybe apart from "Wasn't i supposed to be healed when i'm tanking?" comments) we usually have a "heal stuff" plan, with one important contingency and that is: "when the Sh*t is going down you heal MT, you OT and you raid." That way we can relax and heal the way everybody likes and still be safe, whenever stuff goes wrong.
Tbh everyone takes a couple attempts. Everyone I've played with at least. Mind you Blizzard have tended to
And yogg saron *breaths deeply* please do not mention that boss again. I still get the chills whenever anyone tries to coax me into helping them get their proto by doing 1 light in the darkness. The things that seem novel soon seem very annoying and there's so many different things to bear in mind especially if you're going in for the first time.
My recent post The new LFG system
Mind you Blizzard have tended to …. tantalisingly incomplete sentence is tantalising! Blizzard have tended to reward players with fish? Blizzard have tended to juggle balloons on unicycles?
I'm aware that we can only go wide-eyed and excited into Ulduar because we haven't done it before – I simply can't imagine what it must have been like trying to, y'know, raid this place properly.
Hm, I have to admit that I'm a big fan of "just heal anything", without the lol, unless the fight requires healing assignments no matter what (for example because the raid gets split up and you need to make sure that there's always a healer in range of everyone). That is to say, I don't mind following assignments that someone else gives me, but I hate it when people ask me whom they should heal… if you're the one who thinks we needs healing assignments, why do I have to come up with them? They also risk making people complacent (including myself), because it's all too easy to say "well, that wasn't my fault, I was on raid healing" when the tank dies, even if the raid was taking no damage at the time. I prefer myself and the other healers in my group to always be on the lookout for damage being taken regardless of their assignment, in general.
My recent post Instances in Cataclysm – predictions
Maybe it's just because I am a) inexperienced and b) a control freak but although healing assignments can lead to complacency I think not having them leads to messy, shitty healing. I think if you start to get complacent and stick to your individual assignment so rigidly the raid starts keeling over then you have deeper problems than the healing assignments. I'm not advocating that at all.
The advantage of healing assignments – for me – is that when things go to shit you know what corners are being covered by whom. Like if the raid takes a lot of damage, I like to know I can use Guardian Spirit on the warlock, for example, rather than having to "save" it in case I need it for the OT – or if both the OT and the raid take a hit, it's nice to be able to priortise a fragile caster (and probably save their life) over the OT. You can only do if you *know* somebody is handling the OT, otherwise your healing priority is pretty rigid and inflexible.
"there is insufficient, hmm, respect isn’t quite the right word, acknowledgement for the learning process."
^THIS.
In the ICC10 raid that I currently run, I practically force my team to wipe the first couple of times on a new boss. Our DPS is low, and therefore having one of our DPS switch to being the third healer means we will not beat any DPS races. But I don't care. I have our Third Healer heal on our first few attempts on any new boss to allow everyone to live long enough to get several long attempts in on a new boss so they figure out what we are doing. I never expect us to take down a boss on the first or second try. I don't want us to "luck" our way through an encounter – I want everyone to know what it is they need to be doing when, and to know it well. I don't care if you stood in the bad stuff on our first few attempts – I expect you to have done so while you are learning the fights. I don't care that the blood beasts fed on your soul while you thought you were supposed to be DPSing the boss during our first few attempts.
I learn best by screwing things up multiple times. I just assume most people learn the same way. If we have a new addition to our raiding team who feels uncomfortable and unfamiliar with the fights, I whisper them the basics, and tell them to focus more on learning than succeeding right away. It infuriates me when people get so frustrated by wiping on something NEW.
My recent post Revisiting Circle of Healers
I love your blog posts, because so many of them sound just like me. I’m a slow learner on fights too (which irks me.. I have a PhD, and WoW makes me feel dumb, what?), and on top of it I’ve just joined a hardcore raiding guild who’ve been working on ICC25 since it came out whereas I’m new to most of the bosses. Fights with high mobility and good-vs-bad placement are hard for me to pick up on the first few attempts, leading to my turning into a pretty priestangel a whole lot. My guilt levels skyrocket when this happens on limited attempt bosses. Happily, my new RL is so logical and ordered with his fight explanations that things make sense to me sooner rather than later.
Tardraid sounds like an awesome, fun group. I wish there were more people who were willing to approach the game that way, with a lower FFS quotient all around. (Also, ‘cockweasel’, must remember that one.)
Healer assignments are one of the most crucial aspects of raiding.
I had the opportunity to heal a few attempts at Valithria on my shammy – now THAT's fun healing stuff!!!
My recent post Festergut: a DPS DK Perspective
I always appreciate a group that's willing to let the learning curve set in at the right time rather than trying to force players to magically one-shot everything. For me, though, what irritates most is when I'm in a raid with brand-new content for everyone but it's me who gets the Talk Slow So She Can Understand approach. "Okay. Now I need you. To stand here. Right here. You see me? I have a symbol over my head for you. So you understand where to stay. Got it? Yes? Stay there. Right there. Good girl." It doesn't matter that I'm typically one of the more competent raiders (read: frequently helping veteran players learn what they're doing wrong), but no one needs to be singled out on a group-wide learning exercise simply to make the menfolk feel more secure.
Anyhow, that's my unwarranted venting on your blog. Kudos to your team for putting the cart after the horse in the raiding world!
I think this is the ugly flip side to the this-must-be-puggable raid designs we're seeing in Lich King. Everybody assumes in a PuG environment that they know all (even when they don't) and because the encounters are designed so that about 80% of players need to do the right thing, 100% of the people think it's easy.
Fortunately I started raiding early in the Burning Crusade when you couldn't pug easily, but raiding was quite difficult and most fights required all your members to do their job right (ok, 1/10 could probably fail and you'd succeed). But I started raiding with 9 other people just like me – who had never raided in Classic WoW. And killing those bosses was a massive achievement for us. More rewarding than it is now actually.
The great thing I'm finding during Wrath is that about 23 out of the 25 raiders that I play with have a similar raiding experience to me (maybe about 5 of them raided classic WoW too) and so after the first time you experience a fight you can quickly liken the new mechanics to previous raid mechanics (for example the Blood Queen vampy chic in Icecrown has an ability just like Yogg's Brain Link, the Blood Princes Empowered Shock Vortex reminds me a bit of Gruul's Shatter albeit without the knockback and stun – the effect is the same – spread out or deal friendly fire damage to those nearby). Everything old is new again. New raiders don't have that same experience to draw on.
My recent post There’s No Such Thing as an Exploit
Your relaxed raid group sounds like a huge amount of fun! And it must be great to do the content at a measured enough pace to appreciate some of the scenery. Perfect for holiday snaps featuring The Hat!
And, yes, I agree fully and completely about the nelfs versus cows. My cow harrumphs at me if I’m not quick enough to meet her needs and is her own person, while the nelf I rolled to try out the darkside just giggles and jiggles rather mindlessly…
Tapelia, is that a blog I see before me?! *cheers* I am really enjoying a more relaxing form of raiding – although I have to admit it's a luxury you can only indulge when you didn't see the content the first time round. I can't imagine ever wanting to do this with ToC / ICC.
My nelf is called Belphoebe (inspired by the Faery Queene – I thought it was fitting) although so far she seems to have spent most of the game sitting in the hottubs ahem moonwells back at the starting village, emoting Belphoebe is a girl! and getting outraged because I found some random nelf wearing the same robe as me. GASP! She lacks of the dignitas of my cow greatly. Moo!
If I wasn't so horribly sick of Ulduar (yeah, it's the greatest raid instance ever, too bad I've been living inside it since it was released) to the point of even clearing the keepers just to get access to doing Yogg tries makes me feel uneasy, I might have come along more often. Neither of my toons are appropriately geared and I don't keep old epics around so I can downgear for it either.
Oh, and also: I am so totally ahead of you: http://theechoisles.blogspot.com/2009/07/understa...
(not to mention we killed Mimiron as a guild on the 15th of June, but I am willing to cut you some slack on that one.
)
I do totally understand why you wouldn't take a relaxing vacation in a place you've already done to death. I couldn't lightly imagine doing this for ToC or ICC, no matter how good the company. For what it's worth though, I'm always very touched by your willingness to muck when we're a dude down… although it is probably the very opposite of fun for you. I kept meaning to send you a thank you PM and then thought it might constitute a form of emotional blackmail, in case you consequently felt obliged to be helpful again in the future
And oh shock horror, Vorla writes a typically insightful post in his little updated blog … I like your posts very much, when you write them
And I think you'll find we're killing *Mimirom* on Friday, it's different….
Mimirom, o rly.
See, the tardrun already has a bunch of internal jokes I don't get. I feel so alienated when I join. And yes, it is more of "I ain't doing anything useful anyway, it'd suck if the tards had to call it" than "zomg Ulduar" but no amount of emotional black mail is going to get me to come when I don't feel like it, so thank away. Bonus points of you tell me how awesomesauce I am as well. And can you make it out "to Vorla: The greatest raider"? Thanks.
What's good about Ulduar is that you can muck about, but there is still a hurdle if you want to kill the last boss. Much like Karazhan which I also hold as one of the better raid instances in the game.
And I've actually been meaning to blog lately. More than the usual "hmm, maybe I should update my blog. No, can't be arsed.", to the point of actually opening the "New post" window and starting to type. And then not having structured enough thoughts that can end up in writing.
My recent post 2009 in hindsight
Mimirom was a typo on the forums – a typo YOU YOURSELF MOCKED, you doofus.
If you genuinely feel alienated by the tardraid then we're doing it wrong because it's meant to be the opposite of that – I just can't tell if you're being ironic or weeping, lonely and alone, in the corner for lack of tard in your raiding life
Also we invent our stupid jokes per run so it's easy to catch up, and I reckon your brain is equal to the task.
Also you're so susceptible to people going "Oh Vorla, you are the greatest Vorla who ever was, please come and grace us with your mighty, throbbing wowcock" that it seems just plain heartless to take advantage of it
Oh, I thought it was some kind of silly afterhand reference like the bonsai war cry. Which made me check around to see if I can buy some. Cause they'd be pretty awesome to adorn my flat with when I finally move out. Also, I haven't posted in that thread so I take no responsibility of mockery.
And no, I don't feel alienated but it's so obvious that you guys are becoming your own little clique and it's cute.
I truly am the greatest Vorla there ever was! Mere mortals tremble before my Vorla-ness! Continents shatter under my feet when I tread them!
My recent post 2009 in hindsight
Your relaxed raid group sounds like a huge amount of fun! And it must be great to do the content at a measured enough pace to appreciate some of the scenery. Perfect for holiday snaps featuring The Hat!
And, yes, I agree fully and completely about the nelfs versus cows. My cow harrumphs at me if I’m not quick enough to meet her needs and is her own person, while the nelf I rolled to try out the darkside just giggles and jiggles rather mindlessly…
Your relaxed raid group sounds like a huge amount of fun! And it must be great to do the content at a measured enough pace to appreciate some of the scenery. Perfect for holiday snaps featuring The Hat!
And, yes, I agree fully and completely about the nelfs versus cows. My cow harrumphs at me if I’m not quick enough to meet her needs and is her own person, while the nelf I rolled to try out the darkside just giggles and jiggles rather mindlessly…
Your relaxed raid group sounds like a huge amount of fun! And it must be great to do the content at a measured enough pace to appreciate some of the scenery. Perfect for holiday snaps featuring The Hat!
And, yes, I agree fully and completely about the nelfs versus cows. My cow harrumphs at me if I’m not quick enough to meet her needs and is her own person, while the nelf I rolled to try out the darkside just giggles and jiggles rather mindlessly…
Your relaxed raid group sounds like a huge amount of fun! And it must be great to do the content at a measured enough pace to appreciate some of the scenery. Perfect for holiday snaps featuring The Hat!
And, yes, I agree fully and completely about the nelfs versus cows. My cow harrumphs at me if I’m not quick enough to meet her needs and is her own person, while the nelf I rolled to try out the darkside just giggles and jiggles rather mindlessly…
Raiding is made good by the people you do it with – I am now completely convinced. Easy content that you know will go down in a few tries you can do with anyone for the fun of killing, maiming and looting. Hard content that takes evenings worths of wipes you need good company. Lately when we have struggled with progress I have longed for the atmosphere of our Ulduar10 runs of yore and lo, the other night the ICC10 run consisted nearly completely of old core raiders. It was amazing.
The run was in some ways quieter than normal (as we have some stream of consciousness people in the guild), but the atmosphere was just kind of relaxed and friendly – but competent. There was some banter on Vent and we somehow managed to clear the first wing in 45 minutes, went on to one-shot Rotface (guild first after many frustrating evenings of attempts), two-shot Festergut and got to start working on Professor Putricide. It's amazing how well it works when you know that everyone will be doing their utmost in any attempt and no random AFKs on trash or after wipes, just back in while brainstorming tactics. It was a night of awesomeness, more because of the atmosphere than the kills in many ways.
And last night we had an extra night so we could keep trying the Professor in a good-bye raid for a guy who has raided with us on and off since we first started Kara back in Dec 2007 – he is off adventuring Down Under for a year. It was very sad but goes to show there are some awesome people around.
(Not sure if there was a point in there somewhere)
I've recently come into an appreciation for the learning process in WoW raiding. As a rogue, there's really not much to it other than stabbing things and not dying. Oh sure, there's the occasional add that needs to get down, like, RIGHT NOW, and there's the occasional STOP DPS, but it's really not that complicated. But now I'm playing a healer alt. I'd brute-force my way through heroics, earn my
badgesemblems, and get geared up. Still not much to learn. You heal the tank, heal a DPS if you have time, and generally FoL/HL your way through it and TA-DA! You're now in 4-pc T9 and have the gear to start thinking about raids. And this is where the fun ends.There really does seem to be a culture of "Let's get this done now!" which leaves very little time for learning on multiple attempts. I see a good bit of your "Just heal anything" mentality, and it pisses me off, to the point where I am really disinterested in raiding. Don't get me wrong, I want to learn, but a lot of times you see people quit groups after one wipe, or pulling without giving time to buff or explain strategies.
I think I had so much more to say in this post, but my ADD is acting up. That, and there's some silly character limit. =^/
Agnostique (the agnostic paladin)
Heh, sounds like our resident rogue – he's recently taken to shaman healing for pretty similar reasons, actually.
Anyway, learning a new fight and a new way of doing things should be fun and encouraged – not seen as the ritual of humiliation in which people whinge at your slightest failure. Good luck healing raids – it's a tonne of fun, really.
Just heal stuff…along with its partner, "just don't let people die"…I had that up on Jaraxxus Must Die earlier this week and I hit the wall about like you did, and for exactly the same reasons — because then all the healers prioritise the same way and somebody might die who had no business dying since you vastly overgear things. It takes all of, what, thirty seconds to parcel these out? I think it probably boils down to a fear of leadership — people don't want to be put in a position of responsibility so if someone sets up assigns then they're now, like, the Healing Lead of the raid and it's better to have no leadership because then you can just blame everyone instead of having footprints going right back to you (in their mind) and thinking everyone will beat you with a stick if they wipe because They're Lead So It Must Be Their Fault.
*shrug*
My recent post HPM Chart (non-holiday)
Gah – "don't let people die" – gah! I hate that. Oh rly? Is that what I should be doing. 'Cos I was just going to stand here in my sissy robe and watch people bite it. I think you're probably right about fear of leadership – I mean it's not like I'm jumping up and down to offer healing assignments and strategy *either*. And Chas wrote a couple of posts back about people being unwilling to "try" properly because it makes failure look worse that way.
Hmmmm…it wasn't you? I thought it was. I guess I just generally attribute mockery to you, then.
Actually cliques are bad, m'kay… if we are, in fact, becoming a clique, it's not cute, it's a problem. Cliques are the last thing you want in a guild. For what it's worth, the reaon we make such a big deal about the Ulduar runs is because we're constantly on the verge of not being able to do them – and so we're constantly trying to sell them as The Most Fun You Could Ever Have So Please Please Please Won't Anybody Come And Join Please. And, don't get me wrong, they are a lot of fun but they are marginal, and that's kind of a difficulty of its own.
I think the word you're looking for is Vorlatude.