Bad Raiding Experiences?

[Zurick]

I recently "retired" from WoW and I had been playing for over 10 years. Now the majority of experiences in WoW were through raiding and creating friendships. Some of those friends I still talk to today and have for the better part of a decade, while others I grew distant from, or never really had any type of communication anyways.

Over the years I've had some amazing experiences. I'll never forget the push to Kael Thas with my guild, even though were weren't a "great" guild, it was still an awesome experience because we came together and did it together. Same goes for Illidan, Heroic Rags and many others, but in those years I also had some bad times. I've always wondered when I should have cut out of those groupings instead of sticking it out because "it's the best I can get into" or whatever reasoning I created in my head.

Today I was playing some HotS alone, relaxing, and a member from the worst experience, without even knowing me decided to harass me on behalf of one of that guild's leaders. Mind you, I left that guild over 2 years ago now because honestly I was dumb and shouldn't have stuck in there as long as I did. I never knew what a Migraine REALLY was until my time to exit from that guild came to be and I haven't experienced once since. There was a tremendous amount of pressure, not just to perform, but to give up my life fulfilling the goals I had (Blackhand at the time) with them.

To sum is up in easy terms here. I joined this guild in MoP with some friends of mine as during their mumble "interviews" they seemed pretty nice and they had room for 5 of us, which should have really been a sign but it wasn't. Quickly we first learned that the leadership in the guild wasn't up to par with playing, but it was ok since we were still doing well and we didn't mind carrying them at first. Throughout the journey to Grom some small issues started to occur, but it was typical drama stuff. Nothing too big, but some irregularities began to occur. The leadership started to make demands, and get pretty hostile from time to time, even going so far as to tell us we had to raid late, and it was mandatory if we wanted to be there because he was our boss and we were his "employees." This would have been the point that most normal people would have left, but many of you who can probably relate to this know that when you're at the end of a tier you'll deal with some strange circumstances in order to achieve your goal. If for nothing else to make your raid history look a little more pretty if you wanted to go elsewhere.

Eventually we killed Blackhand and that's when the problems really began. When we joined, we were told by leadership that this was a pretty laid back guild and they didn't intend to push to be a top guild which was fine by us. We wanted to kill stuff at a good pace, and not have to worry about things that the elite worry about, like Alts or PTR. This changed when the leadership saw us get a really good ranking that tier and it started to go to their head. They started to compare us to top guilds at the time like Method and such. While my friends and I thought it was a little crazy of a comparison, Skroe really believed it. So with the rest of the officers they began to plan for things like "optional" PTR, and "optional" alts.

As Beta geared up for the next expansion, optional became mandatory. To most of the members this wasn't ok, but it was something they were willing to try, and as one of the main tanks I felt it was my obligation to do so as well for many of the people who I had become friends with while there. So we showed up for many PTR fights, we got alts together for the raids when the expansion would launch.

So the expansion launches, and all of us get to max level, and we're all gearing, pushing anything we can to be raid ready the day they open, and we did the same for our alts and such. This was actually a pretty entertaining time. I enjoyed much of this. Unfortunately this brief period of fun would soon turn into a miserable experience that didn't really stop until I quit WoW. The first sign that something was "off" was when we were doing our split pushes, we noticed only 2 groups of people were getting gear. The officers, and friends of the officers who would not be raiding with us. Now, we're not gear whores and I tend to pass on most gear offered to me, so much as even being screamed at by one of the officers for passing a tier piece to someone who needed it more in order to help us push the DPS benchmarks on Butcher. The thing is, this was a loot council, who wanted to please their friends, get the top gear, and still push top ranks. Now, obviously the non raiding friend thing is wrong, but also these guys prioritizing gear to themselves was just, off as well. The GM of this guild to this day as I found out, still performs in the 1% rankings on WCL.

When it came time to do Mythic Highmaul, most of our core had no gear, and fights became a real struggle. It was pretty disheartening to my friends who I came with because things were just going the wrong way, and the officers were taking it out on us for not having the gear they never gave us to kill stuff. None of these officers are what I'd consider "performers." Often our nights went like this...

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/42380669

Now shortly after this stuff became the regular, most of the friends I came with didn't just leave the guild, but they stopped playing entirely. A path I regret not taking myself. At this point I had personally realized why the guild had so many open spots when I joined, and why it was about to have that many open spots again. During this period I had learned that my thought was true, and this guild's officers have been doing this well before I got there as well. Unfortunately against my better judgement I became a part of my own problem and just stuck with them because I couldn't find another guild that had tank openings at the time, and this continued up until Blackhand. I kept searching, but wasn't finding much as I wanted to stay near the same progression, which wasn't nearly as good as the previous expansion, but I know I'm not a, at the time "Blood Legion" level player myself.

As I previously mentioned, being in this guild I began to suffer from Migraines and I didn't know what was causing them at the time. I wasn't happy or anything, and I didn't realize how stressed out I was feeling. This was especially true as we were pushing Mythic Blackhand. It had taken me a long time, but the thing that did me in, wasn't even game related. One of the raiders we had played with left our guild and joined another. I had taken a shine to him and he was a pretty cool person to chat with. Unfortunately he wasn't doing well in his real life so he took it upon himself to end it. It was a sad time for a lot of his friends who did not see it coming. To make matters worse, Skroesec/Skroe had decided to attempt to capitalize off of his death by trying to poach raiders from his new guild claiming he was coming back to Tyranny. This was an entirely bogus claim, among other things he attempted to exploit in the wake of our friends death made me realize he was a truly deplorable person. This act from him led to me realizing I was in a terrible place both mentally, and in WoW. I left the guild immediately. To me this was a line you just couldn't come back from as a person. Now I'm not a saint and I've done many things I'm ashamed of, but I couldn't fathom how someone could go this far.

In my time in this guild, I learned that Skroe was many a things
A Pathological Liar - This guy still claims his guild is a 4 night 5 hour guild despite almost never raiding less than 5-6 nights, for more than 5 hours.
A Despicable Human Being - Even beyond the death thing he was very manipulative, and was pretty good at attempting to turn horrible things into a positive for progression.
Two Faced - He would literally trash talk people behind their backs, and then would trash talk you to those same people he just trash talked.
Cheater - This dude loves to cheat. He will look for outs, and if you happen to beat him to one in the same rankings, you better believe he reported you.

But his biggest sin? He's managed to convince hundreds of people to take him into content he does not deserve to be anywhere near, and get angry at you if you don't perform well.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...#view=rankings (His main is Strife these days, and he's still running the same con on some other hapless people who like myself, just don't know any better.)

Why did I waste this much of my time writing this?
1) I've needed a place to just let this out for far too long and never look back.
2) People shouldn't be afraid to admit they kept themselves in pretty horrible situations for the sake of progression.
3) I hope this sheds some light on Skroe and what kind of person he is.

Now that this is off my chest, thanks for those who read it. I get that it's mostly my own fault, and if you think I'm an idiot. You're probably right. If you find yourself in a shitty spot, it's ok to just leave, and while this is something on the internet, emotion still exists when you've invested so much time into making something work. For me it was WoW, I loved WoW, and I loved most of the experiences that came with it.

Lastly, who the fuck harasses somebody some 2 and a half years later about a guild you left, when you don't even know them?

[Heathy]

ah the old popcorn moments, personally i try to ignore the personality clashes, I've never cared about wiping its part of the learning process, I raid with less than 15 most of the time the smaller group is more close knit but also has drama llama moments.

as long as i've played i've had minimal drama thankfully. you might find this thread just gets locked because you can't really just go naming and shaming.

[potis]

Question why, why does anyone care about some scrub? :S

I dont get the point of this post, apart from a sort of personal blog thingie.

Most guilds out there have these issues, terrible leadership that barely know the game and gets carried, its up to you to figure it out and stop playing.