Powerless

Events in my guild have taken an interesting turn since my last post about how it was dying. Basically I immediately felt a lot better after getting the frustration off my chest. (People seriously underestimate the value of a good cry or whine sometimes.) Yes, my guild was in an atrocious state, but who said that I had to lie down and take it? I'd be better than all those other people, those... traitors, who left the guild because they were tired of nothing happening. I'd make things happen myself!

I made a post on the guild forums asking for the cooperation of everyone who still cared about the guild. A fair number of people came out of the woodwork, often sounding a little sheepish as they talked about how so many of their friends had left but they still felt that their home was here. I found their words very touching, as they closely mirrored my own experiences - I originally joined the guild to play with two of my friends, but after a few months one of them left for a more hardcore raiding guild and the other stopped playing. For all intents and purposes I should have felt abandoned and out of place then too, but I didn't. I stuck around and it felt right.

Anyway, people agreed that we should get back into raiding as a guild, even if it was "only" ten-mans as opposed to the twenty-five-mans we were used to, and the sole active officer created a couple of events on the raid calendar for this purpose. I actually got pretty excited, along the lines of Brave New World: In a brave new world, with just a handful of men, we'll start all over a-gain!

I thought of what other things we should be doing to get things going again, like update the guild message of the day more regularly, update the guild website, clean up outdated forum threads... so much to do! Except... I don't actually have the powers to do so, as I'm not an officer. I asked the guild leader (who is still around, if very distracted by real life) if he'd consider making me an officer so I could make a better contribution to getting the guild back on its feet. I was told that the officers would consider it but haven't heard anything back from them since then. That was about ten days ago.

It's highly ironic that I find myself in this situation, considering that I was offered an officer position about three times over the years but always rejected it because I knew how much hassle was associated with it, and I believed that we had enough alternate candidates who were perfectly capable. Now that I'm finally willing to take on the burden because the alternative is a dead guild, I can't seem to get the leadership's support!

And I don't really understand it either. I like and respect our guild and raid leader. I understand that their real life concerns take precedence over playing WoW. But... why does this have to stop the rest of the guild from having fun together as well? I've seen a guild leader leave WoW before, and he was perfectly happy to hand the reins over to someone who was still invested in the game and let us continue on our merry way. Forcing the whole guild into inactivity with you seems kind of unfair.

On Wednesday we actually managed to get a raid together. The sole active officer couldn't make it, so I led it. We didn't do too great as we had both some raiding newbies and people who were clearly quite rusty, but we had fun and killed stuff, so as far as I'm concerned it was a success. It just feels weird to do all these things "as a guild" but with little to no backing from the leadership. I've never seen the guild's powers be so disjointed from their base before. It's very strange and I really want it to change. There is still time.