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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsOfficers' Quarters: Burnout already?
by Scott Andrews 
Mar 21st 2011 at 9:00AM
In the emails that I've been receiving lately, I've noticed a disturbing trend: Many guild leaders are finding themselves burned out right now. On the surface, it doesn't make much sense. After all, the expansion is only a few months old. Many guilds are still progressing through tier 11, earning new perks every week, and looking forward to all the great new content that future patches will bring. How can so many guild leaders already be burned out?
A few factors are feeding this trend. The first is the insanely long gap between the release of Icecrown Citadel in patch 3.3 and Cataclysm. The Ruby Sanctum was hardly any help to keep raiders interested during this time. Most of the guild leaders who survived that period did so by constant recruiting, merging with other guilds, or working diligently to keep players interested in raiding; all of these are high-stress situations.
Then Cataclysm released, and rather than breathing a sigh of relief, these guild leaders now had a whole new ball game to contend with. They have had to ensure their raiders or PvPers were prepared for endgame content in which the gear curve was suddenly much steeper than it had been since the early days of The Burning Crusade. Raiding guilds have had to make tough choices about the size of the raids they would coordinate and how they would deal with gear in the new loot paradigm. Once those guilds made it into raid zones, they found themselves up against bosses much tougher than those in Wrath's first tier and completely unfamiliar to most players -- unlike those in the endless Icecrown runs we knew by heart.
To add to the trouble, most classes underwent massive change in this expansion. DPSers were still learning the new, more RNG-based "rotations." Tanks were still learning how to cope with reduced AOE threat and the pitfalls of Vengeance. Healers had it worst of all, transitioning from a spamfest style of healing in which one global could mean a player death to a style in which careful spell selection and mana conservation became the keys to success.
All of these changes led to an environment bursting with the potential for drama. Slow progression, arguments about raid size and raid slots, loot issues, conflict over which bosses to tackle, players who quit the game because they didn't like their class anymore or because Cataclysm felt too "same old" for them -- any one of these problems leads to a heavy amount of stress on guild leadership. Many guild leaders have been facing several of these issues at once.
Looking at it in this light, it's no wonder so many are having a tough time right now.
It's okay to be burned out
If you're feeling overwhelmed or unmotivated at this point in the game, don't feel guilty. It's a natural outcome for many people in your situation. Talk to your officers about it. Talk to your guild members. Often times, all it takes is the ability to vent about it and you'll feel better. It's not always a given, but sometimes when players see an officer in this situation, they volunteer to take some of the burdens away from that player to give him or her some time to recover. It's important to give your guild members this opportunity to help you before you reach the point that you don't want to log in anymore.
How you feel isn't what matters most in this situation. How you deal with it is far more important.
What's troubling to me about this current wave of burnout is the way that many officers are managing it. Last week we saw an example: a guild leader who had been at it since the days of the original release. It's not surprising that someone who has been playing for so long would feel the urge to move on. Even though he probably should have reached out for help sooner, at least he's going about his departure the right way -- he's exploring options for how to preserve the guild in the wake of his decision.
Deal with it the right way
Many of the emails that I've been receiving lately contain examples of the wrong way to act when you're feeling burned out. I've heard about guild leaders who roll secret toons on other servers, join other guilds with their mains for better raid progression, or just stop logging in altogether. I'm not condemning their actions. All of these things are acceptable if you find them necessary for your sanity or your enjoyment of the game -- but you must stop being the guild leader.
The worst thing you can do is to take such an action without talking to anyone in the guild about it. The guild will flounder for weeks before people realize that a new leader is necessary, and by then it could be too late. If you care about the community you've built and led, you must tell people what your intentions are.
If you want to raid with another guild, for example, it's going to be a hard truth to convey. However, you aren't doing anyone in your own guild any favors by trying to have it both ways and retaining your position. Fold up your guild, turn it over to someone else, or at the very least, explain what's happening and let the remaining members sort it out. It's far better than the endless resentment you'll incur -- and drama you'll inspire -- as the leader of a guild you don't even want to raid with.
When you talk about your plan, you don't have to have all the answers. You can say it's how you feel right now and you don't know what you'll want to do in a week or a month. That, again, is natural.
As a result of your decision, you may find blame, anger, disbelief, or desperation aimed at you. Have the guts to deal with it. Don't take the coward's way out and leave everyone to wonder what the heck you're up to. You'll undermine all the respect you've earned, and you'll probably burn away any possible bridge to return to the guild if you do eventually want to come back.
The burnout isn't the shameful part, and you should never be ashamed to admit those feelings. The shameful part is not handling it decently, by skulking away or by refusing to give up your position. If you must do something drastic to manage your burnout, then resign with dignity and give your guild a chance to succeed without you.
/salute
Recently, Officers' Quarters has examined how strong new leadership can create a guild turnaround, the pitfalls of promising more than you can deliver, and lessons learned from Scott's own guild demise. Send your own guild-related questions and suggestions to scott@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 7)
Wonk Mar 21st 2011 10:13AM
I warned players... flying mounts reduced players to commuters, not adventurers.
The game gets boring when you avoid the world and fly over it, when you fly over it to yet another daily, another Rep obligation, another portal to the same thing you did yesterday... and no chance for it to change since you fly over everything... nice view?
Forcing players to run heroics, forcing guilds to have players who never pvp'd to pvp for perks, raid content that was designed to frustrate and not be fun. changes to classes that forced players to abandon how they enjoyed playing...
Raiding?
Blizzard said, let's see, what pisses players off, okay, now, let's add a LOT more of that, then it'll be fun. Guilds are beating their heads against the wall to progress, guild leaders are less & less able to say... Nice kill last night, instead they have to encourage a rapidly eroding group of players to yet again face a raid that is bound to end up like the night before.
After 6 years players need More to keep interested, not harder, not more rep grinds, not more crafting dailys... these are all fine, but after years of the same players start to feel it's like some twisted job.
We all love WoW, but even something you love can get old and tired if it doesn't stay in shape and interesting, if it feeds you more of the same, if players feel trapped and are looking at the PC thinking... do I even play today?
Other games are offering New worlds to explore, yeah, they have much the same as WoW it can be said, but it's a NEW world, you can be surprised, delighted.. and you tend to look forward to that type of new experience... is it any surprise a game like Rift, which is good, but no WoW killer is sucking players away so quickly?
WoW is just showing it's age, it's like grandma, you love her and she is still your favorite, but it's gets tougher to sit there with her listening to her same old stories when all your friends are out playing cool stuff.
The Dewd Mar 21st 2011 10:25AM
I have to agree. I'm not raiding (see below) so I'm working on dailies for my healer alt (my main's pretty much done with everything except Tol Barad dailies for the mounts). I shudder at the thought of grinding out rep on a 3rd toon so I've been leveling a second druid to try out balance and to see the world. I've enjoying seeing the changes in zones (and updates to old questlines like in Duskwood) but even that isn't holding my interest very well.
Straz Mar 21st 2011 10:47AM
I agree with the first paragraph especially. I think a majority of the burnout is how we, as players, have reacted to the game itself. Things started getting convenient, and we pushed for more convenience. Dungeon Finder has made the game impersonal, and heirlooms have made leveling more of a inconvenience to reaching level cap instead of an adventure.
The burnout I'm seeing has to do with difficulty. Not that the current raid content is particularly hard, it's just not easy and thoughtless anymore. My guildmates have become complacent and refuse to learn how to best play their classes. Instead of practicing and gearing in heroics on their mains, they level more alts and perpetuate the cycle. Now we have a guild full of people who constantly want to change their mains because their main's class "sucks" or "got nerfed."
The evolution of the game is constantly making things more convenient, and as a result a lot of players have gotten lazy. With the massive changes in playstyle since Cataclysm, people are tending to get frustrated instead of adapting and pushing through.
Personally, I'm having the most fun with the game right now, and I've been playing continuously since launch. It's a game. If you're not having fun, you should probably take a step back and weigh your options.
DarkWalker Mar 21st 2011 12:27PM
I agree, in part.
Non-interactive travel time is one of the things I hate more in a game. I stopped leveling Archeology when I noticed that, while working on it, I was spending more time playing Zelda on my DS than actually playing WoW. The same can be said of some other things - combat in WoW, specially as a tank, is simple and boring enough that I could often play Zelda with my right hand while farming mobs for daily quests with just my left hand.
On the other hand, I find it important for my enjoyment of the game to be able to do what I want, when I want. The combination of LFD and dual specs actually prevented me from burning out badly in the middle of WotLK. Without them, I would not have bought Cataclysm - I would be long gone by the time the expansion released.
In the end, I'm playing a mix of DCUO and LotRO for the time being, and will buy both GW2 and ST:TOR. Unless one of those games surprises me, given the promised feature list, I fully expect to keep playing GW2 in the end - instant travel, free respecs anywhere when out of combat, classes that can fill any group role, free server transfers, all players granted identical performance PvP-only gear for arenas, non-random gear from instances, zero loot drama, etc, make me really interested in that game, since it will have about every convenience I always wanted in WoW.
nikdaheratik Mar 21st 2011 4:09PM
I don't think the flying thing was what did it for me. Mainly because they made sure the world down on the ground was aggressive enough that flying feels like you're escaping the danger more or less rather than avoiding the world below. Kind of like a hit and run approach to questing. There just isn't enough going on at 80-85+ to want to go level another alt through there. Granted I haven't finished Uldum, but I did the highlands quests and they were fun, but there's not a stormpeaks equivalent and there's just not enough questing options even in there. In Wrath there were at least twice as many quests from 70-80 as there were from 80-85, so you could always go back and do those.
And I can't say for sure if it's the lack of socialization either, as what I've been playing instead has been 100% single player (Civ V, Half Life/Portal, etc.). I think they need to open 2 zones worth of quests just to keep it interesting. Otherwise you're left with wrapping up and doing rep quests like the end of LK.
Snouty Mar 21st 2011 7:00PM
When I hear people say things like "people have got lazy", "they aren't pushing through". It annoys me a little. This is supposed to be a game not a job.
I thought the idea of heroic raids was so that people who wanted a hardcore challenge had somewhere to go and experience one. I don't see the problem with casual guilds still getting to see a reasonable rate of progress in the normal raids without having to be at the top of their game. What's wrong with showing up half drunk, maybe not uber rep grind geared but still downing bosses and having fun?
Pyromelter Mar 21st 2011 8:14PM
Flying mounts did not dampen the enthusiasm for wow in BC or Wrath. Maybe it was because they were built more for flying, but I never felt the world diminished with flying there.
The Dewd Mar 21st 2011 10:17AM
I have the exact opposite problem. I'm the GM of a small guild whose core consists of folks who started at different times from Vanilla to Wrath. A lot of our "core" players are Vanilla starters who didn't raid much, if at all, until BC - because we were too small to even do ZG without pugs.
Most of our folks are back to the Vanilla-style alt grind because we don't have enough geared healers to raid. (We tried once a couple of weeks ago and Halfus was destroying the tanks too fast.) A lot of our folks are seeing their playtime diminish for various reasons and it's a rare night that we have 10 people on at the same time. I'm not burned out, I'm restless for 4.1 because once ZG and ZA are dropping 353 epics we might be able to gear up enough folks to try raiding.
genericcommie Mar 21st 2011 12:50PM
Coming from a small guild myself, to an extent I can sympathize. I joined it late in Wrath, on an alt, because I could do some ICC on it there. Their core Group all but went MIA shortly after Cata dropped, and The current "core" is a few of the core group coupled with the saturday 2nd/alt group.
Anyhow, the departure of some of the core raiders probably set progression back some, though we had 10 ppl show up for the first month or two. We also started on Halfus. At this point I'd swapped to my main, a healer. Don't give up on Halfus. It very well could be that it wasn't the tanks or healers fault per se. Some combinations of drakes are harder than others (at least at first). The BIG thing is knowing what each drake does (buffs him/debuffs him). If, as an example, you have Nether Scion, Slate, and Whelps, you have to contend with a Mortal Strike and increased weapon speeds if the first two are left down..When we left Nether Scion down and let Slate and whelps out..our tanks got flat MURDERED. The rate at which the MS stacked was too much. So we swapped strats, left Slate down (we be lazy mon) let the other two down, and Halfus attacked slower, had a chance to miss, and did less damage (i
Wistin Mar 21st 2011 10:17AM
I haven't played in about a month or so. It started out because I had real life issues going on, but now that those have subsided, I find I don't feel like logging on.
So I thought about why. The simple answer is, it is boring. I have nothing that needs doing in the game that I can actually do. I leveled all my alts. I have characters tied to family members who used to play but also quit (maybe they quit, they haven't said so but haven't been on either, thus the inability to move along).
My main isn't useful for anything because we want healers and tanks. That leaves pugs for me. I spent my time in EQ looking for groups for hours before I tossed that game, too. In wow the process is automated but you have the same result. When you finally do get in a group (if its a pug) you are assumed to be useless since you are a dime-a-dozen DPS or if you aren't putting out the damage of a top level guild raider they kick you. Good enough isn't good enough anymore.
I have been replaying old games I have to pass the time. I can do something at every turn in those games. I don't have to rely on the fickle public to enjoy them.
Shoryl Mar 21st 2011 10:18AM
While I am not a raider, I can see where some folks are seeing burnout. I am a relatively casual player, coming in at under 20 hours a week. I have 3 level 85 toons, all of whom started at level 80 when the xpac dropped. In addition, I have a level 63 toon who I started right after the Shattering. On my 3 85s, I do very little 85-level content. I occasionalyl PuG on one of them, and another I'm currently working specifically towards getting old-world achievements. The third is currently my archaeology toon, and the only thing I ever log on to her to do is that.
The only reason I'm not burned out is because I get to set my own timeline and priorities. If I were trying to gear for raiding, rep grind, or any of the other normal end-game things on one toon, I'd be burned out, too. There's just not enough to do.
Sayomara Mar 21st 2011 10:19AM
I haven't been an officer in my guild since the early days of Wrath, but just looking around I already see people logging in less and less. I think the on rail nature of many of the Cata zones doesn't add much to replay value and daily quests are as tired as they were in wrath.
While PvP still is enjoyable for me I'm planing to let my Warcraft account laps at the end of the month, there just isn't enough going on to justify keeping my account going.
The simple truth is most of the content for this expansion is already out. Yes there will be more raids and few more instances but the bulk of any expansion is at release and that content just isn't worth 15 bucks a month.
I'm sure I will check back in on the game sometime after The War of the Ancients Raid/Instance comes out but til then I'll put my wow money in other places.
Parrin Mar 21st 2011 10:22AM
Guild Leaders have to wear many hats: strategist, recruiter, referee, administrator, judge, and banker are just a few of them. Oftentimes life coach and mediator can force their way into the picture, too. It’s a stressful job to begin with (and one where you’re never paid). Most guilds have various officers who will assist with some of the roles, but the Guild Leader is expected to be the final vote and the last line of defense for any officers that are unable to contribute. Without any additional interference, burnout is not unusual. It’s expected.
But this article is asking why the amazing rise in burnout from this expansion. Really!? The new guild progress system that was implemented added some awesome benefits for being in an active guild, but it also added some expectations beyond recruiting and raiding. If your guild is not making the rep cap, everyone is going to expect brilliant ideas for fixing the problem. Maybe you don’t have them. Maybe everyone is not buying into the ideas you have. Maybe everyone expects everyone else to pick up the slack in rep. And MAYBE your best raiders are being recruited by more successful guilds.
On top of this, the learning curve increased at a drastic rate. By itself, this wouldn’t have been too bad. Plenty of guilds survived with this level of challenge in vanilla and BC. But to hit us with this change at the same time as the guild progression system was just a terrible idea by Blizzard.
Don’t get me wrong. I like both changes. Tanks and healers are much more thoughtful and careful in instances. And the benefits of playing with others in guilds have encouraged some folks to behave like colossal jerks, but it’s also encouraged some really classy players to step up and start contributing. Overall, I just think the difficulty level should have been introduced about 6 months before the guild progression aspect. This would have given everyone a change to adapt to the changes.
Junionn Mar 21st 2011 10:26AM
My personal perception on the burnout thing has a few different aspects to it..
1) Guild burnout - After joining a guild who began raiding at the end of Ulduar, we were geared enough that we could drudge through the material all the way up to LK at the end of the expansion - with mostly everyone in full T10 + 30% icecrown buff, people were lovin it - high numbers, progression through the 12 bosses - but now that it takes a bit of time to gear up and the difficulty skewed a bit - guilds are burning out because raiding isn't as 'easy'. Especially if you were in a 'scrub' guild moving through the content late. I think that once firelands is out, guilds will be more inclined to start running through BWD and BoT when T11 is a bit easier to obtain.
2) Player burnout - it again falls with the idea that late in Wrath there was a lot of content to 'farm'. PUGs were running ToC and Ulduar for kicks and w T10 easy enough to obtain, people were running icecrown w the buff and enjoying it.
Grinding out reps and dungeons with more of an emphasis on CC which increases time played, is a stark contrast from late WotLK which most people remember as the end felt like the last 8-10 months.
I think things will change once people begin to outgear the original heroics and start finishing the runs in less than 40mins.
We shall see though.
Brian Mar 21st 2011 3:13PM
I just returned to the game after leaving during Burning Crusade. It wasn't any different then. End Game raiding broke up our guild. I came back now, and while the guild is still maintained by a Hunter who wanted to keep it going, it's got maybe 5 active players. And most of the players I played with aren't even playing or are on different realms now. The end game has always been a burnout from what I remember.
This time around, I'm content to quest, and enjoy the new content. I don't need to raid, it's for people who have the time and patience to devote their 100% of their gameplay to support it (gear runs, money for pots etc, gathering mats).
Revrant Mar 21st 2011 10:33AM
I'm just not satisfied with the change in direction, or the bull headedness of the development team regarding these changes in direction. I heard there were nerfs to Heroics, but I quit before that happened, the launch embittered me so that I didn't want to come back. I was entering Heroics with raiders gearing up for the first tier, and we were spending hours upon hours in each pounding our heads against a wall, stopping to rethink strategy and pull things from wowhead, and failing until we all quit in frustration, spewing vitriol.
That's a very large portion of this burnout, and you failed to point it out, though to be fair none of the wow.joystiq team share the feelings of these people and have thus failed to point out the areas where the expansion is lacking. You have a lot of raiders who have to go through much harder, longer rep grinds, much harder, longer point grinds, much harder and very, very draining heroic grinds for raid gear where each heroic can seemingly last an eternity.
These things will burn people out quickly, especially when there's a weak buffer zone between enjoyable leveling content and grinding, I blew through it on both sides and the grind killed it for me.
I have decided to skip this expansion because of the change in direction which lead to me feeling burned out with the hope that Blizz will learn and adapt for the next. I will say it's been strange since the launch of Wrath, where we had a perfect gooey center of challenge, grind, and reward, to a bad reward philosophy overgearing people and allowing them to bulldoze content, emphasize the wrong stats and abilities, and then cover statistical wounds with mechanic patches(ICC), and then a complete reversion to BC type content.
I and many others did not adore BC, and I hope the next expansion is their best yet having learned from all of this.
Eldoron Mar 21st 2011 10:37AM
Wow, I envy your problems, you're all in 359 now, my guild raids once per 2 weeks ><
Murdertime Mar 21st 2011 10:41AM
It's simply that content is hard and people had gotten used to relatively fast progression. And it's the result of the player bases vocal demands.
Because of the fast progression, they bitched. People were suddenly getting purples. Naturally, of course, you deserved purplesb because you were leet. But not those other people. They didn't deserve their purples. They stood in fire and all manner of assorted horrors. I mean, you occasionally stood in the fire but you had to keep your rotation up and...well....you earned your purples and they didn't.
So Blizzard gave people the content they claimed they wanted. Rather than what they actually wanted which was content that was easy enough for me but too hard for other people.
And lo and behold, 90% of the people bitching weren't as good as they thought they were and they aren't progressing and they're getting burnt out because they aren't progressing because things are as hard as they wanted them to be.
(Though frankly, some of the boss mechanics are complicated for a first tier raid.)
(Also, the anti-melee crap is just a complete joy.)
I do expect Firelands to be a bit less brutal.
I also expect people to go back to bitching about ez-mode raids if it is.
N-train Mar 21st 2011 11:31AM
Exactly.
All people did was complain that heroics (and many raids) were worthless and easy and elementary from launch. Even the more-casual people were getting bored of "faceroll aoe" heroics. TotalBiscuit said it best when he was doing the Cata-event bosses on the PTR: "It started easy and it ended easy".
So Blizzard listened and made them legitimately difficult. I wouldn't call heroics really BC difficult (especially now that average gear lvl has gone up), but significantly more difficult than Wrath. Which is what the majority of players wanted, right..?
While I think that the difficulty from boss-to-boss could have been much smother (something they adjusted), I felt like Heroics were actually pretty much spot on in difficulty. It took some focus and some effort, yet only a couple times did I feel completely helpless/frustrated, and those moments were overcome with some better gear and better flexibility.
Honestly, my only issue with heroics is that they were too damn long and the random nature of the dungeon finder means I'm screwed if I only have an hour to play and I get DM or SFK. I've heard Blizzard say "we hear you on the length" but I'm concerned that ZA/ZG (which were originally raids) will take 2 hours each as well.
Pyromelter Mar 21st 2011 3:22PM
The only people I remember bitching in wrath about it being easy were the hardcore but non-elite vocal minorities on messageboards. The overwhelming majority of people I played with (as well as myself), on both the casual and hardcore ends of the spectrum had no problems. In-game, hardly anyone had a problem with wrath, and the problem of "difficulty" was solved with hardmode raids. Blizz should have simply made the hard modes hard as they are, and kept everything else as easy as before. Or, maybe a little more difficult, but not as hard as things are now.