It was a disaster.
It got me thinking about what went wrong. I did not stay for the whole run because of personal reasons, but I was able to occassionaly look over or hear my wife getting frustrated with a multitude of issues. At the time I was not in a good mood, but having spent some time thinking about it, it has become somewhat amusing to me. How can a huge repair bill be fun or amusing? I will tell you.
I have a quote on one of my forums signatures that says (and I paraphrase this) we learn by doing things when we have never done them before. If I can recall which one it is from I will come back and correct this, but in the case of this group who ran ZA, this saying applies. A few of the members were undergeared for ZA in the first place, while others were so overgeared it was not even funny. They through together an on-the-fly raid group and decided they would not only take down ZA, but do the timed run portion of it. I will not go into details of the run, but they did finish the run and cleared ZA. I do not want to dwell on who did what wrong or even focus on the aspects of the raid. My goal here is to question the fact that our guild has grown and grown and grown. With the increase in numbers, did we go down in skill?
Just as the title says, is having numbers more important than having quality players who know their roles and know what is expected of them? I must admit that as the guild leader I am torn. On one side I would love to see the guild grow and be able to run 25 man Naxx whenever they want to. On the other hand, I miss the old days, where you logged in and knew every member of the guild and could rely on them in a pinch. So it makes me question which is more important?
Well, the answer really amused me. Neither is important. The game is about having fun and doing what you enjoy the most. Sure as the head of the guild I have a little more to deal with, but this is why I have officers to help. I do want to see all the end game content and in order for this to occurr, we must grow and gain new members. I also want to be able to log on and know everyone. In order for this to occurr I just simply have to be friendly and when I do not know someone, simply introduce myself and check in and see how things are going. Thus I answer my own question, but perhaps not the concern of the members who have seen some issues with the growth of the guild.
So to that end I thought a little more and came up with this answer. If the new members are going to become old members, then they must know what is expected of them, thus the officers will need to do their roles and make sure that we are plugging these individuals in and running with them. To this end, I have gone out of my way to stop what I am doing and go assist a group if they are in need of a healer. If it is a lower instance I am willing to run an alt with them and help them learn how to function properly in a group. Does this work? Not always. Some people are beyond help. However, there are some really good success stories and that is what I strive for. I believe that if you have a quality core group of individuals, the numbers come in time, which is apparant by the growth of MAS.
I know this is not a deep or insightful post, but I do know that there are members of MAS who have asked what is going on and expressed concerns and I am sure there are others on here who read the random blog that probably have the same issues. So in closing, the numbers are important. You cannot be a guild of one, two, three, four, or five, but you need people. The answer to this is to make sure and surround yourself with quality people. Then in turn those people surround theirself with quality people and you begin to see the guild grow, thus achieving both quality and numbers.
This post was originally published on January 6, 2009, on the original Holy Shock blog site.