15/04/2010

Ignorance is bliss

Some time ago a friend and guildie of mine asked me how I felt about the concept of putting guild members on my ignore list. When I probed him about what had inspired this question he admitted that he had put another guildie (whom he barely knew) on his ignore list because whenever said guildie said anything in guild chat he just found it extremely annoying. I said that I didn't see a problem with that.

I suppose that in an ideal world everyone in a guild should like each other, but I can't help thinking of my guild as more of a large family (what with it's hundred-odd accounts), which simply has both its bright and its ugly sides. On the plus side it means that we have a strong core of long-time members who are very attached to each other even if they fight sometimes. On the downside you also have to deal with the guild equivalent of "that uncle you can't stand because he doesn't seem to do anything but tell stupid jokes", or moments of bewilderment as your third cousin's second ex-wife greets you warmly and you have no idea who the hell she is except that she's "family" and you're supposed to be nice. (I get the latter feeling a lot when people invite the alts of friends of friends into the guild.)

Anyway, the thing with a big family is that you kind of want everyone to get along, but at the same time you generally accept that this probably won't happen. Since I'm looking at a large guild the same way I see no problem with someone ignoring a fellow guild member, though when I discussed this with my friend I qualified at the time that it would probably be a problem if we were talking about two raiders. After all, raiders are supposed to be able to communicate during raids. In fact, there were one or two people in the raid force in the past year that I considered ignoring because they bothered me so much, but in the end I didn't dare to because I was afraid that it would come back to bite me in the arse at a crucial moment during a raid.

A few weeks ago someone finally managed to make me snap though and I ended up putting a raider on my ignore list for the first time. And I have to admit that it felt good. I found that he hadn't done anything that I could outright complain about to anyone and maybe I was being overly sensitive anyway, but his attitude and the way he talked to people were really starting to grate on my nerves. When he finally started to target me as well and chewed me out in whispers for not knowing how to do something or not doing it the way he wanted, I decided that I had had enough of it and just clicked ignore. It's really helped to make me feel better and suddenly I became a lot more relaxed and cheerful during raids again. At first there was still this vague fear that I might miss something important, but in reality that's extremely unlikely, as he's not in a leadership position or even doing anything remotely related to my own job in raids (which is precisely why I found his constant attempts to tell me and others what to do very annoying).

If anything I only feel vaguely guilty about basically just ignoring the problem, because as I said in the past I believe that a good guild is worth fighting for, and if I think that this guy is ruining the fun for a lot of people, shouldn't I do something? In all honesty though, I'm still feeling the lull and not really in a fighting mood, plus I have a hunch that this might be one of those problems that will sort itself out after a while. Sometimes simply ignoring something can make it effectively go away in my experience, as I've already "outlived" quite a lot of guild members that got on my nerves at some point or another.

Have you ever ignored a guildie or fellow raider?

8 comments:

  1. I have more than once. Aside from some confusion on my part due to apparently one-sided conversations, I saw next to no negative effects. The one exception was in my first raiding guild; I didn't know when I joined but the GM was one of those /2 "lf people for cool raid guild we're super awesome join plz!" people. So he was on my ignore list. That wasn't so good, but they didn't seem to get offended once we figured out what had happened. I'd done the ignoring a while before I joined, so I'd forgotten all about it.

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  2. yes. I've also been ignored myself. more often then I've chosen to add people to my ignore list. from a perspective of someone who seems to grate on a lot of people's nerves - sometimes, a lot of times, those people who rub you wrong? they mean well. they might even try to change their behavior around you as to not offend you. and sometimes, clash of personalities is just impossible to resolve. (the downside is trying to convince yourself is that you're not a bad person, you just don't get along with a lot of people :/)

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  3. Never, but that's normal since my guild is very small and we never recruited openly, just on recomendation or by being real life friends of any guildie.
    Even that, being guild co-leader you can't ignore anyone. If someone deserved an ignore he would get gkicked first. So far only one person has been kicked out, while I had to warn a pair of members for acting as dickheads in pugs (complains came from other people, not from other guildies)

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  4. Yes, I have. Someone from our raiding alliance who I can't abide because he was personally abusive towards me and who makes me shake everytime I come into contact with him was invited to our guild, and the only way I could deal with it (other than not being around very much) was to put him on ignore. If I can't see what he is saying, I can't get mad at him, and everyone will be happier all round. Obviously I would never group or raid with him, so that isn't a problem. It just makes guild chat weird occasionally when another guildie responds to something he has said and you think they have just come out with something completely random :)

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  5. I currently have no guildies on ignore, and I can't foresee a future in which I will. I'm not saying there aren't people who irritate me but it's "irritate me", not "lower my opinion of humanity as a whole."

    In my last guild I had ... um ... 5-10 people on ignore, many of them raiders. I never missed anything vital during raids - especially since most of them would open their mouths and a river of sewage would flow out - and I never felt bad about it on a personal level. However the fact I had more guildies than random on ignore made me suspect that, perhaps, this guild wasn't for me...

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  6. I haven't put anybody in my guild on ignore. But I have muted them in vent. I have been in guilds that people I wanted to put on ignore, but didn't. It just seemed easier to put guild chat on another tab, like trade chat, and just look at it when I need to.

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  7. I know in my guild there are some players who are placed on ignore by others. They're usually socials or friends of some others. I don't expect players to be best friends with everyone. I do expect them to work together at the very least. If that's no longer possible, I don't have much of a choice other than to eject one or both depending on the situation. Ignoring raid leaders and officers is just not an option either especially if they're raiders.

    It's hard enough to recruit players with a specific skill, gear range, role, spec, and so forth. Sometimes I have to put up with personality conflicts (at worse temporarily until I can find another candidate) just to keep the raids going. But it's either put up with someone for the short term, or risk going into a raid short handed.

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  8. I /gkicked her instead.

    Can't say I feel great about it, but my main regret is leaving it so long.

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