Those of you who follow me on twitter will know that a few weeks ago our Guild Master/Raid Leader decided it was time for him to leave WoW. I was devestated to say the least. He’s an awesome guy, and I’m glad I got to meet him in person at our guild meet up earlier this year. He’s level headed, good for a laugh and treats everyone – even people he’s only just met – as a mate. Losing him has been a real blow.

I was worried that the raid team and the guild as a whole would fold – he really is the heart and soul of the guild. But thankfully everyone has pulled through. We have a new Guild Master, Hip, who is also really lovely and keen to keep things on track and has made sure officers are happy and doing everything we can to continue recruiting for the raid team and what not.

New Raid Leader = me!

One of Hip’s first actions as GM was to appoint a new raid leader. Me. I don’t mind raid leading. I don’t think I’m the best at it, but I think I do alright. Still, I was a bit surprised they chose me given there are other, better players who could do it. But here I am, leading the raids now. 

I spent most of my Sunday last week setting up Angry Assignments for each raid boss so we could be a bit more organised, and also so I could get my head around the fights a lot better. I want to do a good job of it! I have a tendency to call things like “the thingy that does the stuff is about to happen – get out of the way!” or “incoming ow!” But I get through it 🙂

Recruiting is the worst

Argh I can’t even begin to explain how terrible recruiting is at the moment. It is truly the worst part about raid leading/being an officer. We have posts on our server’s forums, on the Oceanic Guild recruitment forums, on OpenRaid and I blast about it on twitter quite often. We post in trade chat, on the wow guilds subreddit, our wow progress says we’re recruiting – nothing. Absolutely nothing. Everything I said in this post way back when still stands true now. It’s disheartening. We’re a nice guild – good, fun bunch of people who just like to have a good time together blowing up internet pixels. But we can’t find people to join us or show up on a regular basis.

Which is the other side of the issue – I just don’t understand the mentality of people who agree to commit to a team, but just don’t show up, or make excuses an hour or so before raid as to why they won’t be there. It makes it really hard when there are people who genuinely can’t be there (which is happening at the moment with someone having personal stuff going on that needs the leniency). And it makes it even harder for the rest of us who show up each raid night, because when we’re down players, we can’t do the progression we want to. Yes we can pug, but we don’t always know the level of players we’ll get, so it’s hard to plan. But this is another post entirely.

Trying to kick some butt!

Anyway, we’re pushing through as best as we can. We’ve got 4 heroics down and are quite keen to get even more down – just need the numbers. (Any Oceanic players looking for a home? Here’s our thread on the forums.) But we’re a good little team. I hope I don’t let everyone down with my special raid leading skills!