Grats Abryn!

My wife, night elf Priestess extraordinaire, hit 70 last night!

Not a moment too soon, as Militiae Templi has begun running Karazhan this week, the first wave of brave souls, having ventured in Tuesday and spanked the first four bosses. I am leading the second wave through Sunday night, and I'll be sure to post an update Monday morning regarding the progress.

The drama I have been chatting about in previous posts, is starting to pick up steam. Ten man raids certainly make keeping everyone happy very difficult, and I think to some degree, our officers are getting over-analyzed with every action they take.

If they tell everyone in our 35-40 person per night guild that they will be in the Kara runs, then they are going to get slammed when they can't possibly deliver four balanced raids with equal leadership and success. If they make a lottery to distribute the spots, then class balance will be totally fucked and the raid will most likely wipe with little or no real progress... again, officers will be blamed for the failure.

In the end, they have chosen to basically offer very limited guidance on how Karazhan should be handled, and then stepped back and out of the line of fire as best they could. I and a few others stepped forth and organized our own runs, which alleviates a great deal of the pressure from them in some ways...

If I make a raid that fails, the officers will avoid blame, and no one will attribute it to anything more than a tough night of raiding. They will pick up and move on. Not so for the officers, they would get blasted for being unprepared, not taking the right classes, or worse, not taking the 'best players' to succeed. If I leave people out when forming my group, the officers have stayed above the fray by setting no guidelines on how the slots should be allocated. Its really up to me, and thus I take heat for any perceived favoritism.

Of course, knowing this, I created my group equitably. Everyone in our guild is talented or they wouldn't be in the guild, so I simply determined which class allocation we needed and then filled spots based on the first people to whisper me their interest. When a given class was missing (read prot warrior) I asked the only people available and keyed who could handle the job. No favoritism, no problems.

Now at first, I was particularly annoyed with the lack of structure that necessitated my stepping forward to take charge. These people are officer's, lets get some concrete policy and get rocking, I thought... Of course, the depth of frustration from those not invited to Tuesdays first big run, was also unexpected. If they run the show, they are likely to have a mutiny on their hands after a few weeks of people not getting into raids. After it all settles down, and enough groups form up and the rest of the guild gets to 70, the issue will all but disappear and they can step back in and shore up some future plans, without the visceral animosity that is now directed their way. Time cures all things, as they say...