Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 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 7 of 7)
Pyromelter Mar 21st 2011 8:24PM
"Catering to the hard core minority and ignoring everyone else was a massive mistake."
quoted for truth... and there are so many other quotes that the excellent wow insider commenters have put out there.
I don't know if GC or the developers ever read 3rd party websites, but someone should give a community lead or a developer or GC the link to this article. There is an overwhelming amount of logic and heartfelt truth in everyone's responses, and I hope at least some of this makes it to the higher-ups at blizzard.
As far as Rift, I can speak on why people are leaving wow for Rift, but I won't, because this is about wow. Rift simply is at the right place and the right time for where WoW is faltering, and the main focus here is why is WoW faltering. And you brought up some more excellent points to advance that discussion.
sprout_daddy Mar 21st 2011 11:55PM
I too hope someone who has the ears of the devs tells them about this conversation. Unfortunately (and I never thought I'd say this about Blizzard), I'm not sure if anyone would really listen - I feel like Blizzard's focus is somewhere else these days (maybe Titan, maybe finishing Diablo 3, etc.), and it feels like the response to WoW player concerns these days are mostly about sustaining, not growing, the community - encouraging people to stay through the easiest methods possible (ZG and ZA, I'm looking at you). I'm just not sure how much Blizzard cares these days about making WoW a better game - I think the Cataclysm dev team - particularly the folks focusing on 1-60 - did a great job, but I get the feeling Blizzard has moved on to other things, which makes me sad.
Spellotape Mar 21st 2011 9:05PM
The difficulty change from Wrath to Cataclysm was not a huge problem for me - it was challenging, but I adapted and the raid content is appropriate for the level of difficulty I find interesting and worth my time.
That said, for so many people I know? It is too difficult. Some of those people brazenly declared after the ease of their Wrath experiences that they wanted *more* challenges and greater difficulty without really being ready for it or prepared to do more to experience those things - others were always casual players who were happy with the difficulty level and the one they have to work through now is simply too much sometimes. It makes me sad that I have friends who aren't really ready for Cata raiding content and who want to raid *so* much but simply don't have the skill level/awareness/other to do more than wipe on the same boss every night for three hours.
WoW is in an interesting position where it needs to satisfy the needs of people who want that harder content as well as the large majority of people who simply don't - there are just too many people who play WoW to not try to make it, well, easier for them.
Frozenstar Mar 21st 2011 9:16PM
I feel burned out on both my main and my alts, but I think they're for different reason.
First, my alts. I love my alts. I have one of each class. I have all the professions. I love the idea of leveling 7ish characters simultaneousnessly through the newly revamped old content, synergizing their profession leveling, and seeing all the new quests.
...Except that now you level so fast with heirlooms that professions can't always keep up, and then I'm stuck farming a zone for a day or two before I can move on. (Especially for mining.) And I can't even get the quest achievements for loremaster because I'll level through the zone before even doing half the quests. This has killed the fun of leveling alts for me. I've only been able to see a third of the newly done old world because I'm forced to choose between the fun quests I know, new quests, and sticking around to do a lot of green and gray quests. I've also stopped running 1-60 dungeons because again they would make me level faster and I would miss out seeing even more of the zones.
And for my Lvl 85s:
Now that my raid group doesn't need to pug, I've turned off tradechat. This has increased my sanity levels, but I don't meet new people in the game anymore. When I pug heroics, it's rare that I see someone from my server, so I don't bother conversing much. Also, I feel disheartened that I don't like TB and or the daily area much, but it bugs me that there are those purple trinkets sitting there, taunting me. I love archaeology but it's a frustrating timesink even with my archaeologist being a mage. Gearing up my high level alts feels more and more chore-ish, whereas it used to feel like an investment.
But it is weird. MY guild has the best raid attendance ever right now. Our performance and team cohesion are the most best they've ever been. Guildies who used to struggle to get their toons geared and really excel at their class and giving me a run for my money for top dps. But raids still don't feel nearly as exciting as they used to, and I'm not quite sure why.
I think also the whole atmosphere of Cata. Northrend was snowy and looked completely different and there was the theme of the rugged adventurer heading northward (I had awesome IWD nostalgia like whoa). The scourge were awesome as this enemy that kicked the world's butt in vanilla, and now you were confronting them as peers. Wrath felt like you were in the middle of a war. Like tension was slowly building to a climax of the end bosses. Cata feels like...I'm just roaming around. The plot doesn't feel like it's building. The thought of finally facing Deathwing just isn't as meaningful. He was responsible for stuff in the past, but he's only had a significant presence with the shattering, and although running around the ruins of Auberdine was meaningful, none of it carries through to end game content. And I hate how everything is centered on SW ally side. I only travel to other caps on my mage.
I've loved the idea of Azshara as an end boss ever since I first heard about her, but even with her minions' appearances, what has she done? Why do I want to kill her? Because she's evil? Pffft. (I feel like that caracature of an actor: "what is my motivation?!") I don't want to kill 'evil' things. I want to kill thinks that have pissed me off, threatened my loved ones, and deserve to die. Wrath made it really easy to interweave the RP and PvE elements of the game. In cata, I'm struggling to care about the story. (Maybe also I'm just older and plot has never been sophisticated on the whole--narrative depth appears only in patches, in an odd quest here and there. Sylvannas and Silverpine Forest are THE exception. If all of Cata felt like Silverpine & Hillsbrad, I would be playing 12 hours a day.) The worgen starting area has great atmosphere, but like the draenei, their culture is barely carried through the higher content. And what is their culture, besides old timey clothes and english accents?
Also, since this has turned into a monster rantfest that peeps will prob roll their eyes at it, I'm just gonna say it: Blizz fails pretty hard at having most its charactered centered around the american middleclass white male view of 'epicness'. If I see one more character who's basically all "I'm the manliness man who ever lived!!!1! Look at my shoulders!!! I kill things so you have to think I'm cool!!!" I'm gonna pop a bloodvessel. Sylvannas is THE only female character who feels like she could be a real person. Jaina is stuck as this ideal madonna figure who is powerful, but really just wants a man to hold her at night (according to a bio on here). (gag). Garona seems cool, but where the hell is she? Tyrande is doing nothing but holding hands with Owldude. Azshara? No personality, just evilness. ooo...exciting. And all the exotic (read: they take after non-white races) peeps are on the fringe. The trolls. The tauren. Where are their epic badasses? Hanging out, spitting at garrosh. Or dead--as we didn't even get to see them die. oooo..... riveting. And when the hell are the BEs gonna get an actual leader who isn't a bump on a log? Velen's probably just spends his days napping. (Then again, I wouldn't know since there's no reason to visit two of the most unique looking cities in the whole game.) The worgen seem maybe cool but again, the whole "arg we're white men who need to compare epeens" theme is getting boring. Goblins I haven't played, so no comment, but from what I've heard, there's just this prince dude. Who's greedy. wow. tell me more.
I used to have fun just thinking about and planning what I was going to do on wow later in the day. That rarely happens anymore.
Boozard Mar 21st 2011 9:35PM
my guild is still ok. we still have a lot of people playing and we're still having fun. but interest in raiding just doesn't seem to be there. i think it maybe due to the fact that top-end raid gear is simply too easy to obtain. looking back when wotlk first came down, you could get ilvl200 epics from your usual heroics and faction reps, but raid loot from 25 naxx and 25 VoA was still better. this gave people incentive to raid. in cataclysm though, we can get several ilvl 359 gear from crafting, rep grind, and vp rewards. raiding is actually a very minimal upgrade as far as gear goes unless you shoot for hard modes which i'm sure not everyone can do.
in the end, i think blizzard's decision to make end-game gear to everyone may have gone a step too far.
Shadamehr Mar 21st 2011 11:07PM
My guild is struggling, that there is no introductory raiding content like Naxxaramas was for WotLK hasn't helped. I remember that I was raiding as a tank within a week or two of hitting 80. Its taken almost 2 months for all of our members to get geared enough to start raiding. And in that period we've had half the regular raiding team either quit the game through boredom and dissatisfaction with Cataclysm, or have simply stopped showing up. At the moment were considering a merger with another similar guild, but thanks to the lack of a guild merging system that doesn't really look like going ahead.
Suss Mar 22nd 2011 12:23AM
Of course people are burned out. Everything in Cataclysm is a grind:
--the longer grind to gear up a toon through longer heroics
--the obscene amount of time needed to gather the herbs to make the flasks
--the large number of required guild heroic runs on non-raiding days to continue maxing guild levels--something you ironically need to lessen other grinds
--in particular, having to fish 10,000 fish from pools when a large number of fish that people use come from open water (I'm looking at you deepsea sagefish)
--not having a new world to explore and just sitting in Org
--the raids are a large step up in difficulty and require a lot of time, after spending tons of time just to get there
When people have to run faster on the treadmill, they get tired more quickly.
Sarabande Mar 22nd 2011 9:25AM
Agreed (though I don't raid so I can't comment on the last point).
I still love the game and the world . . . and gladly log on every night. But it IS more grindy than it used to be. Resource gathering (of which I'm actually quite good) has become a pain as the items seem more scarce (TWILIGHT JASMINE!) And OMG . . . you brought up the SAGEFISH!!! YES!! I fish for myself and my friends . . . and many of us are casters. But getting the sagefish (or more often, MURGLESNOUT) requires open water.
We are in a small guild. It will probably take over a year to get our fish feast. And the fact that the fish I need the most is from OPEN WATERS doesn't help. If this was Blizzard's way of making fishing "more fun and interesting" please make it boring again, like it was a Wrath.
Volatiles. OMG. The ONLY thing that make this grind tolerable (for my weekly cloth cooldowns) is that I use treasure potions so that at least if the scarce volatiles don't drop, I'll at least come away with from 5 to a dozen treasure chests in an hour's worth of farming.
You are talking to someone who has a guild bank full of lichbloom and icethorns from Wrath. The person who ALWAYS had fish feast in the bag for WotLK heroics as soon as I could learn the recipe (which was in a VERY REASONABLE amount of time back in the day) and get the fish (either from open waters of WG or schools in 3 specific zones). I'm also the person who persevered in the BC grind for making my Spellfire gear (which btw were FANTASTIC!!) and the mats for someone to make my Spellstrike gear.
One thing I DO like is the amount of Volatile Life drops from herbing. And thank God I know an alchemist who will transmute them for me each week to lessen the grinding of my other volatiles.
I think one thing that makes it worth it to log on everyday (aside from seeing my friends, which is a very important reason) is that I can provide things for good friends and guild. Whether it's buff foods, herbs or Volatile Life, I feel like I have a purpose. BUT . . . I wish I could do more . . . like make FISH FEASTS. Or the ability to offer the best enchants (either costs waaaay too much Maelstrom Crystals and I can't afford them yet, or they are some stupid BOE recipes that people sell for a HUGE amount . . probably the same people who will later complain how much enchanters charge or something).
Seriously. We are a SMALL GUILD. It will take us probably over a YEAR to unlock that recipe. WHY they made that perk so large-guild friendly is a mystery to me.
OH my . . I did ramble. Yes, I DO love the game. I think some of the new zones are beautiful. But gathering really needs to improve. I shouldn't have to circle Twilight Highlands for an hour to get not even a stack of jasmine. :P
Tondef Mar 22nd 2011 1:09PM
Wishing that the LFD tool had a check box for "My server only". That would make meeting people to join guilds a bit easier as well. I know the queue times would be longer, but as long as you tell people that up front I think the benefit would be great.
Jason Ralph Mar 22nd 2011 7:10PM
I don't know what caused the exodus, I just wish they'd come back. My guild dissolved, to be absorbed, only to have go hrough this process 4 more times before those left server transferred. I though the Allaince would be better (I play both sides) only to find that they are in the same place. My wife and I decided to stop playing until summer and see what it brings before deciding to leave WoW. It's too costly to server transfer all my characters and my wife's as well.
SumDuud Mar 23rd 2011 7:25AM
Had a guildmate call it Demishing returns. each expac that comes out, people get burned out faster. Really it seems like wrath ruined the game for many. My guild of about 17 only has 2-4 left playing and they play much less than ever.
bmecher2000 Mar 26th 2011 9:25AM
I started playing Just after Burning Crusade was released. I see comments on here that "It is just trash being pulled, go ahead and fix your addon/ log off for biobreak, etc." I remember in burning crusade that trash could wipe your group/raid if you weren't paying attention.
I think what happened is that Blizzard lightened up on the raids so more people could get into them. That caused a lot of hard core raiders, those people who are blizzards bread and butter, to be disinterested in the game. The hardcore raider had a certain amount of ego tied up in getting the top end raid gear that it took serious skill and work to get. (considering most of those were colligiates (sp) and high schoolers with the time to do the work on their hands, is not really important. I would expect it would the case for ANY game). There was teir gear available for dungeons (welfare epics) run in heroic mode that looked like, but was inferior to the genuine raider stuff.
I had no problem with that, you do what you can given the time you have to spend in the game and you get a reward that is appropriate. There are a lot of casuals that got tired if the EJ's running around and it eventually became know that even if gear looked the same- it definately was not. The 5% boost on the raid epics over the heroic dungeons (plus the admittedly better practiced skills the raiders developed to earn it) really showed up in world PvP......... There was enough status bullying going on that blizard had to do Something to keep the casuals.......... "Facerollable raids" was their first attempt to fix this........ That resulted in Hardcore level player defections- not quite the right answer.
With cataclysm, they went back to the older raiding style, and this is resulting in stress and a Darwinian process. Guild that thought they were Hawt Awesome, are finding out that hey- maybe we are not all that........ Old School raiders are "Okay now weare talking a RAID" and finding ways to cope. I think that Blizzard should continue with the Normal/Heroic diferentiation. Those who can skill up and do the work should get the good loot, but not so good that it encourages the bullying that was going on. Something like a 1% better on stats and maybe some more specific mitigation that applies to that particular raid progression. (Fire Resist for Black Rock, shadow resist for Black Temple, etc?) The hardcore guys would get good reward, the casuals would stand a chance in their regular epics..........
I am a casual player, I MIGHT get 6-8 hours a week if I am lucky. I know I will probably never see much of the Heroic level, stuff. I do not play for that- I play because it is a fun way to escape and use up spare hobby time. If that means I have to do the Wintersaber grind to get an epic speed ground mount because I cannot get the gold to buy one- then fine.
The thing that chaps my cheecks is when a grind for an epic mount- YES FLIGHT- requires that you have to spend a mint to get a riding skill for it that cost enough gold that you will not see that mount for YEARS........ The alternative mount- for the holiday events- requires me tio do large amounts of time logged in EXACTLY WHEN the responsibilities that keep me off line are the MOST PRESSING.
This is what blizzard doesn't understand. I wish I couold grind with one of the dragonflights for an "Ice Dragon" or such- it would be a nice thing to set up in Dragonblight. a year of grinding much like the wintersaber grind would be just the ticket........
The same thing for Armor and weapons would be nice too. Consider us casual players the one who cause the "Less likely to have a mob aggro on you when you take the roads" game mechanic.......
I do not need the warm fuzzy "Testing yourself against high odds and succeeding" feeling, I have a job in real life that takes that kind of effort, unlike the teens and 20 somethings that are developing that part of their skill set and like that part of the game.
Dan Mar 28th 2011 4:10PM
I never thought that, a few months after a new WoW expansion, I'd have more desire to play Starcraft 2 or even Call of Duty than play WoW. Heck, I have more motivation to go for a walk on a rainy day sometimes. Maybe that's a good thing for me, but I think it says a lot about the state of the game.
I think there were many mistakes Blizzard made with this expansion, but the biggest mistakes were 1) making heroics too long and frustrating and 2) making normal raid modes too hard. I heard a lot of people in Wrath say that Ulduar and ICC HMs, ToGC, etc. weren't exactly a cakewalk, but the normal raids were. What was wrong with that model? Why go from having normal and hard modes to having hard and uber-hard modes? Why go from making 90 percent of your customer base happy and 10 percent complaining the game is "too easy" to making 10 percent of the customer base happy and 90 percent complaining it's too hard?
The only thing I really have enjoyed in Cata is PvPing on my priest, but that has more to do with my arena partner (who is also my best friend and is almost exclusively a PvPer) than with PvP being well designed (cough, frost mages, cough).
I always said when I began this game back in late BC that the only thing that could "kill" WoW is itself. Looks like that's beginning to happen.
Izk Apr 4th 2011 4:37AM
Two problems from my perspective:
Healing. It's homogenized so all healers pretty much have the same spells and deal with the silly RNG based procs now. There are some fights that favor certain healers, but in the end there will always be more powerful classes now, which seem to be holy priests and resto druids. As a resto druid, despite topping most meters, its absolutely cumbersome, slow, tedious, and clunky which ruins all fun of actual gameplay. My shaman on the other hand is actually more fun to play, but just cannot put out the numbers my druid can.
Difficulty. It's more like a perceived sense of difficulty. Fact is, if not all spells are interrupted correctly, or if you don't stand in the right place at the right time, its typically a wipe/death. Healers are so capped now, there is no room for recovery unless everyone plays perfectly which causes a painful experience in raids. Boss mechanics are not harder than WOTLK, its just a matter how few minor mistakes can be made now before its considered a lost cause. Amusingly they seem to be trying to fix this by giving a battle rez to two more classes (warlocks and DKs) but it was making mistakes and being able to recover without a death that actually made the fights more fun and immersive in WOTLK.
My 10 man guild finished our first heroic and is working on our second. As a resto druid, I've lost all interest in raiding. I don't want to leave them high and dry, but I absolutely loathe playing now (which is strange since 4 months ago I was still logging about 20 hours a week). "Working as intended"??
Katie Apr 4th 2011 6:42PM
Officer burnout is running really rampant in our guild. We had to push in WotLK to get people to log on toward the end, and do mass recruiting. We had to gear people all over again, and in some cases--aid them in their quest to learn to raid. The officers were tired at that point, and then Cata dropped, and it's been non-stop running ever since. I don't know if it's just our guild, but there has been a lot of "me" behavior, and a lot less "us". That makes it very difficult to form cohesion. I've been playing since the middle of Vanilla, and I've never been so tired in a videogame. I look for excuses to not log on and listen to the complaints & all the whining. We're doing ok progression wise--but it's slowed down a bit in the last couple of weeks. Almost all of the farming has fallen on the officers shoulders because no one else wants to devote their time for so little payout (flasks, etc). It's also bad because our tanks & healers...we're down to 4 tanks, and 5-6 healers (because healing became challenging). That means that every tank and every healer--has to log on every raid day (I'm a healer), so the burnout from that is incredible too. I think that Wrath has made people lazy, and now--they want things spoonfed to them again, and it's not happening. Most of us are in our 20s-30s, which means we have families, jobs, other commitments, and so...not having that slowdown, breathe-time...has caused some issues.