Posts with tag burnout

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available from No Starch Press.

It's certainly no rare situation when a guild leader has to scale back his or her time due to offline obligations. The right thing to do is appoint someone who's willing and able to cover your own slack. But what if that person isn't even an officer? This week, a guild member wonders whether it's time to panic.

Hi Scott!

Recently I joined a re-roll guild that has been around since the first of January. The premise of the guild is simple: new members can only join with a level one character and must level up within the guild without the help of outside resources. For a while, this worked out well. Everyone became fast friends and the guild grew to be called "the fam." But now we are approaching another month of "re-rolls," and drama has reared its ugly head.

Our GL just announced an impending life change and since then he's been markedly absent from our roster. One member posted on our forums noting that activity had declined, and another responded with suggestions on how to improve the current state of affairs. A few of the officers replied agreeing and disagreeing with various points, but the general consensus was that the members were not happy with things as they were. Before I go any farther, it helps to understand the... unique, way in which our officers are appointed.

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available from No Starch Press.

Something most nonofficers don't realize is the amount of time that officers spend dealing with guild business when we're otherwise off the clock. Nights with no official events can seem like a great time to log in and enjoy a relaxing solo play session. You plan to work on an alt, level a profession, or earn some achievements.

Then a member whispers you about a loot issue, someone else needs a few alts invited, a third member wants to talk strategy for the next raid, and so on. Suddenly your night is gone and you haven't managed to finish anything you actually set out to do -- especially relax. This week, one guild leader wants to know how to carve out some time for herself.

Hi Scott,

I assumed leadership of our social/casual guild early in the winter, and with the help of two senior officers have resurrected that which was once essentially dead. We have enjoyed the process of breathing life into our little community, and welcomed new guildies with open arms. As the weeks passed interactions between the members increased, guild chat started being used, dungeon runs and retro-raids started happening again, and each week more players entered the fold.

Then with the addition of the spouse and friends of one of our guildmates, we embarked on a raiding career. We are now 5/8 DS 10N, and run regularly two or three nights a week. As is so often the case, we now have more DPS that are interested in raiding than spots available, so we have stepped up recruiting to find enough raid-ready people so that we can start a second raid group.

I sometimes find this process exciting and rewarding, but more and more I am feeling overwhelmed. In addition to raiding and leading the guild, I am also an extremely serious alto-holic. I love questing. I have all the professions covered (some more than once), and on top of seeking out and collecting all the professional recipes, I also collect mounts and pets.

I don't mind putting my responsibilities to the guild and the raid team before my own playtime, but I am finding it harder and harder, with the growth of the guild, to carve out any time for myself.

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press.

For many guilds, the release of a new raiding tier isn't as cut and dry as simply moving on to the new bosses and leaving the previous tier behind. These days, there are a number of reasons to continue with older content: finishing legendary grinds, completing achievements, and downing unkilled bosses on either difficulty. This week, a guild leader feels conflicted about how to approach the raiding schedule with so much unfinished business in Firelands.

Hi Scott:

I'm the guild leader for a medium sized guild. The guild is about 9 months old at this point, and we've had our share of raid member turnaround. Through each generation though, we've gotten stronger. Now that the team is pretty solid and showing up on schedule weekly, a problem has reared its ugly head, and its name is Dragon Soul.

You see, because of the constant turnaround, we were stuck in tier 11 longer than we should have been, and are only now at the point that going 6/7 in Firelands can be done in a couple of hours. We still don't have a Rag kill under our belts. Compounded with that, our Legendary recipient is only in the second collection phase.

But with the new dungeons dropping 378's and Deathwing taunting us, some members of the raid group have voiced in interest in raiding Dragon Soul. One member (who got a Rag kill with another team a couple weeks ago) said he can't wait to kill Rag so we "never have to go to Firelands again." That really REALLY aggravated me, but I kept my cool in Guild Chat.

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press.

Marriage or ... your guild -- it's a fairly straightforward decision! However, it's not an easy thing to walk away from a community you've spent so much time leading and developing, even when you're feeling burned out on the game. This week's email features a guild leader who is simply torn up about the prospect of leaving the guild to another officer.

Scott,

I've been putting off writing this for a long time, but I don't think I can any more ...

During the days of Vanilla I came across a player (we'll call him "Dan") who helped direct me to a great guild ... The guild was small, close-knit, extremely helpful and the most at home I've felt in a gaming community in ages.

Through the years I worked my way up the ranks, eventually earning a spot as one of Dan's officers. Several years later, when Real Life go the best of Dan, I was chosen as his successor. There were other officers there longer, but Dan felt I understood his vision for the guild better than anyone else. I was honored, and have done my best to carry on the guild in the foot steps he left behind.

We're not the biggest guild on our server, or the most advanced raiders, or the best PvPers, but we're good, and we're well known. Our guild name has always been synonymous with quality people, and we let our members know that we value quality of character above all else. When guilds on our server fold, their members clamor to join us, and we're careful about who we let in. We've been around for over five years now, and I am damned proud of everything we've accomplished.

Don't let my glowing self appraisal fool you.

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

We all hear the stories about people who played World of Warcraft too much and as a result had to stop playing to make the game fun again. I've fallen victim to that myself back in the days of Trial of the Crusader. But lately, I've encountered something that at first makes little sense. The best thing I can call it is "reverse burnout," and it's not from playing too much -- it's from not playing at all.

I admit to being a raider at heart. I love making my gear a shiny shade of purple so that I can join nine or 24 other people as we down the big, bad monsters of WoW together. It was my reason for getting to level 70, and it kept me hooked all throughout Wrath of the Lich King. But since the launch of Cataclysm, my raiding days have just ... stopped. Each guild I've joined on the promise of being able to raid either hasn't raided at all, or they've gone raiding without me. And without raiding, it feels like my motivation to play is gone.

I've gotten all the gear I could get from heroic dungeons and reputation vendors (except bracers, which will never, ever drop), daily quests feel like a chore, and the friends that I have online are off in their own raiding guild that I'm on a waiting list to try out for (they're full on hunters). Pickup raids have proven to be too unreliable in terms of both time and talent as well. It's like one part of such a huge game was the glue that held everything else together for me.

So what do you do when one of your favorite parts of the game becomes off-limits? How do you deal with being bored with WoW -- when you're not even really playing at all?

---

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press.

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.

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press.

Officer burnout takes many forms. Sometimes it manifests as a subtle, creeping bitterness. Sometimes it shows up suddenly, as unexpected rage. Sometimes, it's a feeling of emptiness, like the one described in this week's email. This week, I'll look at this particular form of burnout and talk about what this officer can do to cure it.

Dear Officer's Quarters,

I am an officer in a fairly successful 25-man raiding guild (currently #2 on our server). I've been part of the guild leadership for over a year at this point, and my tenure has been characterized by my dedication and hard work. My guildmaster has privately told me on several occasions that he feels that I'm the person in the guild that "tries the hardest." However, of late, I feel that my hard work is no longer rewarding me with anything, not even a feeling of accomplishment.

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press.

This column is a special one for me. A reader wrote an email to the Drama Mamas, who passed it along to me as a topic that seemed more appropriate for OQ. When I read the email, it struck quite a chord, because the issue the guild leader raises is one that led directly to the collapse of my own guild. Yes, my own guild is finished, and so I can now reveal what guild I led and why it is now defunct in the hope that others can avoid the same fate.

But first, the email:

My girlfriend and I are the founders of a casual raiding/leveling guild. It's always been an eclectic mix of people, and it's one of my favorite parts of playing WoW.

We're both friendly and empathetic, and people tend to develop bonds with us. We spend time together to the point where they feel comfortable in asking us for advice with serious real-life problems.

However, the major problem is that our guild is that it's highly focused around my girlfriend and I. It feels like the only people who can lead a raid are the two of us, for example. People help in other ways, like donating to the guild bank or recruiting, but there isn't much leadership in the guild.

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press.

It's been more than 10 months since Blizzard introduced major endgame content to World of Warcraft, and raider burnout is at an all-time high. In times like this, hardcore players often look to casual guilds as a refuge from the demands of more serious organizations. It's not always a bad thing, as I'll discuss, but sometimes taking in these hardcore refugees can lead to major problems. This week, an anonymous officer tells his tale:

Hi Scott,

I'm currently an officer in a guild that started as a social/leveling guild, but toward the beginning of this past summer, we had some level-capped players who decided to take on raiding content. We were having a lot of fun at first whether or not we successfully downed bosses because we were finding a way to stay socially active in our social guild.

During this period, one guildie and I became de facto raid leaders because we were always there on raid night and always the two who got the groups organized. This was when I also got promoted to an officer position. The problem I'm facing now is that we ended up recruiting a couple of new members who had burned out on hardcore progression raiding and wanted to take a more casual approach to raiding.

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available this spring from No Starch Press.

Here at Officers' Quarters, I receive a number of emails every week that don't get featured in the column for various reasons (which I explained last time I did a roundup). Once again, it's time to examine some of these shorter -- but no less interesting! -- topics. This roundup's theme is Cataclysm concerns and preparation.

Just the two of us

Here at WoW.com, we're on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment and you may see it here tomorrow! Take a look at the links below, and be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites.

It seems to happen to everyone at some point or another: the game's no longer as exciting as it used to be, and your logins become sporadic and finally vanish entirely. At WoW.com we love World of Warcraft as much as anyone -- but once in a while, everyone needs a break. Even from their favorite game. Today, a few posts on the subject of burnout.

• Achtung Panzercow discusses the dreaded b-word. Since this blog post has been gathering dust in my "links to use in The Daily Quest" list for a while and Panzercow is still blogging about WoW, it can only be assumed that burnout has come and gone. Or perhaps come and gone and come and gone. Or perhaps... well, you get the idea.
• Mana Obscura talks about battling burnout.
• Moar HPS! talks about trying to stay interested.

Any tips on escaping WoW burnout to share with us? Leave 'em in the comments!

It's time again for Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that asks the question: Which balls are the best? The answer, of course, is also provided by Arcane Brilliance: balls of fire. Balls of fire are the best. Wait, what kind of balls were you thinking about? That's pretty gross. But Arcane Brilliance likes where your head is.

When the Cataclysm class previews were announced by Blizzard lo those many months ago, my initial reactions were a decidedly mixed bag.

Arcane scared the crap out of me. Mana Adept? It took several weeks and many hours of therapy before I could envision any sort of scenario in which that idea didn't sound like a terrible, terrible idea.

Frost struck me as kind of meh. I gradually became more excited after I thought about it for a while, but Deathfrost and Wall of Fog simply weren't all that thrilling as initial concepts.

Fire, on the other hand, sounded awesome.

A giant ball of conjured flame that travels along a set path, sending out tendrils of destruction that incinerate anything in its path? Sexy.

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available this spring from No Starch Press.

What is the purpose of an officer? Most would say, "to run a guild." Here's where definitions begin to diverge. To some players, running a guild means little more than handling guild invites and occasionally managing drama. Those duties are fine if your guild exists for purely social reasons. Any guild that is actively raiding, PvP'ing in an organized way or holding official roleplaying sessions requires much more from its officers. Too often, the vast majority of those tasks fall on the shoulders of a single individual. This week's email is a cry for help from one such officer.

Hi Scott!

I am the leader of a Casual/Raiding Guild, and we've been together for 2 years by now. We were like 5 or 6 close friends that met each other at another MMO and founded a Guild. When we decided to come to WoW, we founded our Guild together, and worked towards its improvement. Today, we are one of the biggest guilds at our server, and we have a strong realm reputation.

Of course the guys that founded the guild with me were officers, including their spouses as we were all close friends, and founded the guild together. That was the right thing at that time.

They sometimes worked as counselors at some difficult times that we had, when I was lost and didn't know what to do or how to do. However, most of these guys never helped me at all with the "every day job" like recruiting, leading a raid, being the master looter, handling drama, or every other daily task that all the guilds have. Every single problem or drama that shows up, I need to solve by myself.

When I inherited leadership of a successful 25-man raid during The Burning Crusade, I had a steep learning curve. After the first year, I had mastered the fine arts of recruiting, juggling subs, managing raid time, resolving disputes and running a tight ship. Little did I know what awaited us when halfway through our Sunwell Plateau progression, Wrath of the Lich King was announced! Fortunately, my guild was able to weather the storm, and now that we are closing in on Cataclysm, I am much better prepared.

Guild masters who haven't experienced the pre-expansion blues may find themselves overwhelmed with the task of keeping their once tight-knit community from turning into a ghost town. Some players may choose the months before an expansion to take an extended vacation from the game. Others may choose to focus on a favorite alt, and still others are chomping at the bit to farm the highest tier of raid content in order to complete their ideal gear sets. No doubt all three types of players are in your guild. How are you expected to funnel everyone's pre-expansion desires and expectations into group-friendly activities that keep them logging on night after night?

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available this spring from No Starch Press.

As I mentioned two weeks ago, we are really hitting the lull between expansions at this point. Many officers and guild leaders will be tempted to take a break from the game between now and Cataclysm. For a guild leader, it's a particularly tough decision. There's quite a bit of uncertainty about what will happen to a guild in its leader's absence. What many guild leaders don't think about, however, is the uncertainty that can occur once they return to the game. This week, one guild leader is returning from an extended break to find that the guild is still going strong, but that many things have changed in his absence, not the least of which is his own role.