Something very sad and disappointing happened in the guild last night, and resulted in someone being removed. I’m still pretty upset that it happened the way it did, after I took steps to prevent it, and thought everything was fine.


We’ve been working on Mimiron, but haven’t killed him for a couple of weeks because we’ve been trying Firefighter. Unfortunately we’ve been held back by random problems, mostly we ve been plagued by the disconnect boss, or we’ve been missing key people. After another week of near misses, last night we were a man down and figured we would just kill it on normal mode.


After he was dead, an engineer in the raid skinned the boss (well, you know what I mean, it’s just that “skinned” is easiest to say). The raid reminded him that the materials from the boss should be deposited in the guild bank to help fund repairs etc. He refused, and got very angry and spiteful about it, which was both surprising and pretty upsetting.


His arguments for refusing to share the items were:

• I spent lots of gold levelling engineering, if you want to be able to get the mats, go level engineering yourself.

• I don’t farm, I need this to make my money.
• I don’t get any money from raiding, if you want to pay me to come raid, then I’ll share these materials.


The first point is a pretty common one, I’ve heard it used plenty of times when people want sole claim to items from instances. And generally, I would agree with it – if you’re a miner, you shouldn’t be expected to hand out the ore you find in a dungeon (although things are slightly fuzzier with enchanting..) In a raid though, we’re all on the same team – this is no PuG of random people – we’re all friends, working together to kill a boss – and tomorrow we’ll be back in here doing it again. So income should be shared, just as costs are shared.


I have to say, though – wow @ the last two, I basically read them as “I’m too lazy to make money, I’ll just wait til I can raid” and “You owe me for being here – I’m helping you out and this is my payment.”



The guild bank giveth..


Our bank repairs are turned on 24/7, even for alts (as we have a large number of alts who help us to fill raiding gaps). People can use this at their discretion.


So, every day, the bank’s reserve of cash goes down, with very little to plump it back up again, other than through donations and anything we can sell. Being a small guild now, we’re not getting the 25man BOEs to sell, and we basically have a very small income. 10 man BOEs sell for very little, 1000g if we’re very lucky, but mostly people don’t want them anymore because there’s better “ezmode” TOC 5/10/25 loot to be had in PuGs. So there’s very little cash trickling in, with a steady amount flowing out.


Some of us have continuously donated consumables, and I personally have donated around 6000g just in transmutes since 3.2, I worked out. A couple of us have basically kept the bank in epic gems which were then given free to the guild whenever someone needed to gem their gear. Other than Onyxia’s single gem reward, there’s no other way that the guild can get epic gems other than through donations or if we use guild funds to go buy them. I don’t think people stop to think about where all the gems are coming from. I have two alchemists and I’m levelling a third, so that I can use one transmute every day purely for the guild bank.


I’m not trying to pin a medal on myself, just demonstrating the (general) attitude of many of the guildies – it’s worthwhile sacrificing a little of your own income in order to always be able to put all repairs on the guild tab. Wiping over and over doesn’t feel so bad if you’re not the one paying for it!


Unfortunately we can’t sustain repairs forever without a steady income of some kind, so I had to post an announcement recently that basically said that items would have to be purchased for half AH price, which gave us the small income we needed to sustain guild repairs, while still giving heavily discounted mats to guildies. It’s win-win. We get a small amount of cash each week, and the members still get cheap enchants and gems.


The other part of the announcement was a statement that any gathered materials from our main raids would go to the guild bank:

Gathered materials from raids need to go into the bank, not into personal pockets.


This includes:


- herbs
- ore/gems
- engineering mats taken from mechanical bosses
- Freya’s alchemist cache


These items are not FFA and free income for whoever is quick enough to grab them. Raiding facilitates the gathering of those materials, and in turn the materials help to facilitate our raiding. It’s not fair to gather these items and then use them for your own income.


We all get gold, cloth, greys and green items from raiding, and your repairs are paid for. Aside from flasks and pots, you should be making a pretty decent income from raiding without having to take those tradeskill materials. The bank, on the other hand, has almost zero income. Please put help the guild by banking them. The guild supplies you with cheap mats, it is not unreasonable to ask that you deposit these items to help us pay for raiding.


Note: I’m not pointing fingers, or bitching at anyone in particular, I just want to get this down in black and white so it is understood by everyone, before it causes bitterness and fights. I don’t think anyone in this guild would deliberately rip off the others. If we all do the same thing, then nobody can look like they’re being greedy.


All of these mats would then be fed back through the bank either as materials to use directly for raids (herbs and flasks), or to generate a small income. I did this not only to ensure that guild repairs could continue for everyone, but also so that everyone understood what would happen with these materials, and nobody would think they were entitled to them and then have the rest of the guild get angry. Every week we have been dutifully feeding the herbs and items from Freya’s room and cache back into the bank, but I was concerned that some people didn’t understand that raid-gathered mats belonged to the raid, not to the gatherer, so by announcing/reminding everyone, there would be no fights or misunderstandings.



… and the guildies taketh away


So, in our guild, everyone’s repairs are paid for (even alts and trials), for everything, if you choose. Food is provided, in the form of feasts. Pots are often provided (eg Indestructible, resist potions). Enchanting mats, flasks, blue and epic gems, orbs, epic BOEs, and basically anything else we have is half the price you would pay from the AH. Realistically, we make raiding VERY cheap – you just have to supply flasks, health/mana potions, and perhaps speed pots, etc. Everything else is paid for. And on top of that, you receive gold from boss kills, plus greys, cloth, and greens as well.


So to hear a guildie, who I actually think is a great person, turn around with great venom and tell us he would not hand the mats from Mimiron over, and that we should all level enchanting and try to skin the boss faster than him (!) if we really wanted the mats, and that we should “stop crying”.. I was just floored. I couldn’t believe it.


If you don’t like it, kick me from the guild, he said. And we did.


I don’t care what your tradeskills are or if they cost you 10,000g to level. In this guild, you’re either a team player, or you’re not welcome.



And that was that.


Perhaps some would see it as a stupid move, to kick a good DPSer because he wouldn’t share 300g in mats. It’s only pocket money, after all. Oh, and if we don’t have an engineer in the raid anymore, we miss out on those mats regardless.


But it’s not about 300g. It’s the principle. Repairs are provided all day every day, even for your alts, and with the gold you get from bosses and random items, that should mean you are basically making a profit from raiding, even after buying flasks and potions for the week. Plus you get the added perk of bargain basement epics, gems and enchanting materials from the bank (and for a long time, they were completely free).


If anything, people make money from raiding with us.


So why would you turn around and bite the hand that feeds you, by selfishly refusing to share materials that came from a boss that 10 people all worked together to kill? Why would you throw it all in for less than the money you would get from one day’s worth of daily quests?


In the wise words of my mum – he sh%t in his own nest.


The whole thing just made me really, really sad. We lost a good player over what amounted to pocket change. But this round, we won’t tolerate people who are wholly wrapped up in themselves and don’t care about the team. I thought we were free of that now, being smaller, and screening applications carefully. To have a good guild member and friend turn nasty at us – over just a titansteel bar and a few eternals – it was just gutting.



*sighs sadly*

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