I’ll freely admit it.  I let my emotions get the best of me in a few guild issues over the last couple of weeks.  I said/posted some things I probably shouldn’t have, and ended up ruffling some feathers that didn’t deserve ruffling.  I am guilty as charged, and I’m here to apologize.  The problem?  It all boiled down to communication, or the lack thereof.  So first, let me say I apologize publicly to those involved, and I hope this post can be an olive branch to mend the torn fences.  (On a side note, this paragraph may have the most cliches per capita of any post in Part Time Druid history.)

In a nutshell, here’s the story.  The names have been omitted to protect the innocent.  A few weeks back, I started to ask around in guild if we had any intentions of trying for a Bear mount.  I knew that they would be going the way of the dodo soon, and I wanted to see our guild accomplish the task.  We are a casual guild, so we can’t often achieve challenges that are easy for other guilds.  Getting all four chests in ZA is one such challenge. 

I made some posts on our boards, I spoke to a couple of key guild members through PMs and in game, and I even made a couple weak attempts at organizing Bear runs.  About a week or so after my failed attempts to get it going, I got an invite by one of our Raid Leaders to go along on a Bear Mount attempt.  I told him I would see if I could "get the night off" from the wife to go along.  I did.  We were pushing for at least the first three chests, and wanted to see how we could do going for the fourth. 

We didn’t get it done, but overall did fairly well.  The healing setup was not ideal, as we went with myself and a Holy Pally.  We lost a good deal of time on the Dragonhawk when we had a hard time keeping up with the raid damage.  I wasn’t surprised, as I would wager a Pally/Druid combo is one of the worst combos for such an attempt. 

Anyhow, I had a lot of fun that night, and mentioned that I would like to keep trying.  I said I would have to change my raiding schedule, shelving my T6 raiding temporarily, so I could come along once a week, but that I did want to go again. 

I wasn’t clear enough.  My failure to communicate was that I thought mentioning it off-hand would be good enough. In retrospect, I should have talked directly to the raid leader.  I should have said, "I’d like to come to this every Thursday, will I be able to go if I do clear it?"

But I didn’t.  I made assumptions, and jumped to conclusions.

So when the next Thursday rolled around, and I was in flight to Ghostlands thinking I would be coming along, I got emotional when I saw a group zoning into the instance without me.  I flew off the handle a little bit, and considered some very untoward actions.  I did manage to cool myself down, knowing in my heart that it wasn’t anything personal, but I still felt slighted.

At the time, I didn’t know that the Raid Leaders had actually been planning to start these attempts soon.  I don’t have access to those message boards to know what’s going on.

Honestly though, I should have known better.  I should have communicated better.  I should not have assumed that I was a big catalyst for these starting, or that other people understood the lengths I would have to go to in order to "clear" a night for ZA.  I think it speaks to our general tendencies to see things with blinders on, to think of things from our personal perspective and not those of others.

I fault myself for this, and I’m a little embarrassed of some of the things I said because of it.    So I hope some of the parties involved read this and understand that I did screw up a little bit.  If I had waited until the next morning, I would have been better off.

Now I’ll just cheer largely from the sidelines and hope they can get it done.  I know time is running short, and maybe I’ll be able to come along again before time runs out.  Honestly, I don’t even really want a bear for myself, but I do want to be part of the team that GETS IT DONE!

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 10:57 am and is filed under Meta WoW. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.