… when a plan comes together.
Memorable words that will be strike a chord with the older members of the guild and A-Team fans of all ages.
Any project or plan is only as good as the time and effort put in and the people that carry it out, and in this a guild is no different than any complex challenge Hannibal and his crew had to face.
Now, I’ve written many words over these last ten plus years on the subject of Weekend Warriors and in this time have had many highs and a few lows to bring to the blog for others to contemplate, but in truth for a while now I had been feeling, as all old warriors do, that the best times, the best comrades all lie in the past. Old glories and old friends, never to be recovered or seen again.
Bear with me as I start to write this on the eve of my 56th birthday which is quite a milestone for a Guild Master and Mythic raider in World of Warcraft, a game that isn’t really meant to still find an audience in someone of my age.
However, as regular readers should know by now, I’m stubborn, never a quitter and in WW I feel that I created something worth defending, worth sacrifice and worthy of love. This has been ever more true since my son Max, or as you know him Rag, joined me in this adventure and as he grew, became an ever more critical part of the team.
This has meant me handing over more and more day to day control of the guild to him and delegating more of a leadership role over the various aspects of what the guild offers to its members.
This has seen a growth in the activities we offer and in our membership base all in a time where other guilds fail and fold, WW instead grows.
This growth has in turn led to Rag and I entrusting aspects of the guild to an increasing number of dedicated Officers and Quartermasters, all who have helped shoulder some of the burden that was previously shouldered by only a few.
There’s an old saying In England that “many hands make light work” and whilst this is a truism, so is the other “too many cooks spoil the broth”. In other words there is always a balance to be struck in numbers, collaboration, delegation and individual responsibility and whilst this is often difficult to attain, we seem to have hit a sweet spot where things work well with the team that we’ve chosen.
Both Rag and I have spoken in the past of a guild divided between progress team and social and flex members which concerned us both due to the lack of interaction and overlap between the two halves of the guild.
This led us to make a change to the balance of appointments, responsibilities and spread of the officer team to encompass the whole guild and it could be said that the success of this plan to better integrate the guild is borne out by the success of the initiatives that have grown around these appointments and what they have permitted us to achieve.
Mythic plus runs on two nights regularly see all ranks of guild members involved together with officers in getting to know each other better by simply running content together.
The success of the flex raiding programme has led us to run two heroic flex runs per weekend which has allowed more socials and progress raiders on mains or alts to get back into the same content once more. We’ve even had organised runs of RBGs each week which is something we’ve never found viable in the past given our lack of PvP focus.
Once a quiet and at times tense or argumentative place to be, the progress raid team has become a place where different characters interact effectively, where laughs and memes happen once more and offence is not intended or taken. Where the whole values it’s parts and vice versa. All this while still killing bosses and more importantly, refarming content faster and faster each week whilst the team accepts the less fun aspects of fixed raid size raiding such as rotation and the bench with far less emotivity and aggravation than it has often caused in the past.
Some may think you just get lucky with who applies and to some extent this is true, but choosing the right people (and saying no to the wrong ones) and treating them fairly and honestly whilst allowing them to play with capable and likeable peers so they flourish and stay is the real reason.
All this has only been possible because of the guild’s membership at all levels. Where in the past we spoke irritably of cliques and people making a solo game out of WoW, now through careful recruitment and an increase in managed activities, we see growing cooperation and participation as people realise the values and benefits of engaging outside their own comfort zone and finding that whether you are a social, flex or Mythic raider this does not define your capabilities in content, rather your choices, priorities and available time.
So, as Rag becomes more and more comfortable taking decisions and working with others in making the guild work, I find myself not, as I expected, feeling side-lined or anxious to interfere and recapture past responsibilities or correct what I see as mistakes but quite the opposite, able to play and enjoy the game with others and look on with pride at my son, our officer team and a guild that has managed to surprised me after 11 years by becoming better than it ever was.
Thanks to all and long may it continue to be so.
