Once upon a time, there was a guild on Rift's Faeblight server that, for our purposes, we will call Our Gang. In all seriousness, this is just a pseudonym, because this post is going to be airing out a lot of dirty guild laundry, and I'm changing everything to protect the derps involved in the RL events I'm about to describe.
Now that the disclaimer's out of the way...
Once upon a time, there was a guild on Rift's Faeblight server called Our Gang. A lot of good people were in Our Gang, since it had cannibalized the top-end raiders from several smaller launch guilds. We all came together through a difficult-to-describe series of public raid rifts, expert dungeon crawls, and tradeskill contracting. At the time, we were more or less the best on the server, and we were tired of being held back by our launch guilds. It just seemed natural to join up under the same tag.
Our Gang was, initially, a family guild led by a husband/wife duo. We'll call them Optimus and Banshee, respectively. A lot of the guild was made up of people that had played other games with them, but by virtue of having the then best-in-class rogue and cleric for our server, they got a whole bunch of hardcore raid nerds. They were used to not being challenged by their raiders. Their word was law, and for years their guildies had simply trusted that they were right in whatever they said. Perhaps most importantly, they had been to this point casuals, and were being more or less pushed into a more aggressive playstyle by the rest of us.
The guild was, in short, a powder keg not entirely unlike the Balkans pre-WWI. A lot of strong personalities fell into the guild: myself, my friend Herpes (an aspiring main tank, and probably at the time one of the best tanks on the server), my long-time guildmates from EQ2, Bob, and Mark. (Bob and Mark were a brother/brother duo, and the cleric/rogue that the raid team crystallized around.) And we all had very strong ideas of how a guild should be run for progression. Our leaders, sadly, didn't have the same ideas.
I promise, I'm getting to a point. Just stay with me.
Optimus was nominally our guild leader, and he was on board for what we suggested- trials, set raid times, who should lead raids, how to handle loot... At least, he was on board until Banshee opened her mouth. As far as she was concerned, the guild only existed to serve her needs, and we were to obey her every order regardless of how on-point those orders actually were. Worst of all, Banshee played a rogue- like me and Bob- and thought she was hot shit.
Holy mother of fuck. She was terrible. Her dps was abysmal, so she played a bard. Cool. Support's not hard. Just keep your motifs up.
Only no. She had to say she was the alpha bard and knew all. Saw all.
I was a bard too. Kinda got railroaded into it because I had (a) skill and (b) a third core set up just for bard offhealing. (This was back when the heal greaters would proc off everything, and so would the heal trinkets.) Generally, I was number three on the heal parse, my motifs never dropped, I kept my debuffs cycled...
And yet I was doing it wrong, because I wasn't playing her way. Never mind that her group was consistently over-performed by mine, even when we switched so that she had the star players and I had the B team. Anyone who pointed that out was harshly reprimanded, and usually saw their loot privileges negatively impacted. Compounding the problem was that Optimus wanted to be the big dick tank, and couldn't handle the job. Herpes challenged him on it, and was kicked from the guild. (There was also loot drama involved, because he thought as the best tank in the guild he should get all the plate, but that's another rant for another day.)
The house of cards just collapsed from there. Our hardcores, myself included, bailed on the guild when we couldn't down anything past the second boss of Greenscale a month and a half later. What could have been a great guild was fuckbliterated, and all because one over-controlling, cocky bitch couldn't get her head out of her ass long enough to see reason, or understand what her guild's actual needs were.
The moral of the story? Don't let your significant other be an officer in your guild unless you know for a FACT that you can stand up to them and stick to your guns with guild policy. And don't raid with your significant other, unless you know for a fact that they can separate the game from your relationship. I know every gamer dreams of finding another game to spend his or her life with but honestly? Unless you have complementary playstyles, butts will get hurt and your relationship will suffer. And your guild. And everything else.
Another case in point: I used to play MMOs with my ex. We always duoed, and viewed ourselves as a package deal. I tanked, he was support, and life was good. After a few months' raiding with a casual family guild, he gets approached by one of the top guilds NA to be their new dirge. (EQ2. Sorry. Should have said that. Aaaanyway.) He was great at it. It was an awesome opportunity. They even agreed to give me a trial as an offtank, in case someone in their core raid couldn't make it.
I was bad. I'm not even gonna lie. This was early in my MMO career, the class I was playing was badly handicapped at the time, and even if I'd been an amazing player my gear was horrid. I didn't have the sense to see that at the time, though, and just fucking RAGED when they told me how bad I was. We had some serious fights irl about getting us kicked from the guild, I slept on the couch for a few weeks, and in the end... we both ended up getting kicked. Our relationship never really recovered from that, and every time something happened in game from there on out, it led to screaming matches and shit getting thrown. It's extreme-sounding, I know, but when you've got two people who want to be the best and are passionate about learning and working to advance their characters...
Yeah. You butt heads. And if you can't keep ingame STRICTLY ingame, you're in for a bad time.
All this works around to why I don't want to be in a guild that's run by a couple, especially one that's half hardcore and half casual. I've been down the "I'm the guildleader's gf/wife, so you have to keep me happy" road. I've seen what it does to guilds, and how it leeches the respectability from GMs. The drama that spawns from behind-the-scenes relationships just turns into a cancer in most cases.
Look at it this way, right? Happy wife, happy life. Most folks don't want to antagonize their other half. They want them to be happy, so things stay copacetic. And like it or not, the other half's going to want first dibs on everything, because that's just how it goes. Humans are needy.
So basically... friends don't let friends lead guilds with their girlfriends. It's a good way to destroy friendships, and a GREAT way to make sure your guild's dead before you even get off the ground.
No comments:
Post a Comment