Since You Been Gone

I kind of smiled at the Chris Cornell cover of Nothing Compares to U as I waited in the parking lot of the dogs’ daycare in my attempt at looking presentable through quarantine with my hand-made Zelda mask from Seraphita. I remembered when I did high school dance; Kelly Clarkson had released her own cover of the song under Since U Been Gone, and just about everyone did something involving the song. Something about that puts me into a bit of a nostalgic mood.

It probably doesn’t really help that with Shadowlands on the horizon, I’ve had far more people talking about how much they miss <Tyrannosaurus Rekt>. I – mostly joking, for what it’s worth – tell them I don’t miss the guild at all.

That’s lead me a bit into a rabbit hole of thoughts, and reflection on where we’re all at now.

It’s been a hell of a year, hasn’t it? We’ve had COVID. Fascism has been front and center for years – generations, really – but finally erupted into actual dinner table discussions. I’ve had cancer treatment. Jaina, my dog, and Panda, my older cat, are showing signs they probably won’t be immortal. We lost Taliesin, my younger cat, and adopted a pair of very timid twins that are so similar and yet so different from him.

My own burnout

I quit Warcraft and I haven’t looked back. I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XIV still, and even ran a team of members that had been in <Tyrannosaurus Rekt> in some capacity. I wound up calling that team in early November due to general leadership-related burnout.

If I want to be extremely blunt, much of that comes as no surprise to the kinds of negativity I’ve faced. Of seeing players that had the skill, but not the dedication or interest in dedication. They could clear content, but were unfocused and didn’t care to do their homework. But more importantly, it came down to managing the frustration and personalities of other players.

See, when you have a group of people, there’s no equivalence in skill or any of that. We all learn at a different rate, and that’s not a two-dimensional graph. I’ve had my own shortcomings on having that lightbulb go off at times. And that’s where the people who catch onto an encounter will very quickly become frustrated.

In high-end raiding in any MMO, everyone needs to be focused for however long both inside and outside of raid. They have to be willing to learn and put in the effort. I often found myself with people that needed to learn but pushed back or ignored feedback because “they had learned all this stuff on their own before” or “used to be a resto druid in Midwinter” or some similarly crappy excuse, or in other cases that I personally, despite pushing them toward resources, did not help them enough to learn.

Hot take, but it’s not leadership’s job to teach you how to raid when you are in a high-end situation. That’s placing not only expectations on them to have themselves raid ready in terms of strats and whatever else, in addition to helping not just you but the rest of the raid. They cannot give individualized attention all the time.

Being open to feedback also had its issues. In Warcraft, the leadership team was always.. either too open to feedback, or not open enough. I think a takeaway there: just because leadership happens to be open to your feedback, and listen to it, does not mean they are obligated to act on it. Oftentimes, they have their own reasons for why they do what they do.

And all that out of the way, at the end of the day, it became very apparent to me that while I wanted to raid hardcore, other people either did not understand what this meant or were not on the same page despite saying so. I felt frustrated we couldn’t put in more time early for the initial Eden tier in XIV. In Warcraft, I found myself frustrated that I didn’t see more of my raiders in their respective class discords having their logs demolished constructively or at least reaching out to have that done on an individual basis if they didn’t know what to look for.

So, that’s kind of why leadership wound up burning me out. It frustrated me to see these adults not taking responsibility for their own mistakes and choices, even though I knew that leaders tended to deal with that. The petty fights and dramas started over things that, at the end of the day, were hardly as significant as we made them out to be at the time just drained on me.

Of course, getting sick didn’t help.

But there’s much I DO miss

I miss the people.

I miss Espyr’s occasional discussions and even advice, and how we seemed to just about always be on the same page.

I miss Gale and his always friendly attitude.

I miss our crude jokes, our longterm jokes.

I miss Artemis’s (bad, sorry not sorry, that’s part of why they were funny) memes.

I miss Tohr’s random, weird noises.

I miss Leorina’s amazing shitposts that still bring me to tears from crying.

I miss Gert’s poop box.

I miss talking about Braum’s to Ramen.

I miss Kyat and I miss Coan and how genuinely sweet they were as people.

I miss the quips from Terra and Caeli.

I miss Waldo messaging me to have a good evening with Ryan Reynolds.

I miss Scribe and his.. well, he was basically an anime girl.

I miss Althenna and seeing how much he grew as a player in just a few months. He seriously underestimated himself, but he was so incredibly dedicated to helping other players grow and learn, too.

I miss Azrok surprising us when he spoke, and seeing how much he grew as a player.

I miss Decisive as a player and as someone I could go to for advice.

I miss Hekili for his sense of humor, and also his dog.

I miss Banter with his questions, his sense of humor (he’s quite hilarious, Stevethemime), his dedication and persistence, and his straight-forward attitude.

I miss Astheria for seeing her come from a long break to ripping bosses apart.

I miss Sakaar and how he really tried not to let anything get him down; he really brought the right kind of spirit to the team in the brief weeks or months he was with us.

I miss Korki because as much as they claim they were bad, they were an amazing player with more patience than they credit themselves with, and I just loved being around them. I wish we’d been able to hang out more.

Kalani wasn’t on our raid roster until XIV, but I wish he had been. His sense of humor, shit posts, and ability to really get into any role he played made him stand out as an amazing player.

I miss Papo for his sense of humor, and well, he was also a damn good warlock.

Mode wasn’t with us for long, but when he did speak up, it usually useful.

Izzi’s gone on to raid with me in XIV, and Chris and Izzi are now both around for Monster Hunter.

So I miss a ton of people. Not things. I don’t miss the game, the hours spent organizing (just to over hear someone say that Callie “doesn’t do anything” – joke’s on them). If I knew we could go back, tanks would be well-balanced so that I could play the one I liked without any regrets of not gearing my Brewmaster instead… I’d consider it.

But I’m not interested in leading anymore. Perhaps being an officer, but never as the main leader. My life and job are simply too demanding these days to give that the proper amount of focus that the team would deserve. And even then, I’ve found a team in Final Fantasy that I’m happy with, too.

And if I don’t personally mention you, I’m sorry! I can’t remember everyone’s names anymore, and I mostly reviewed our old logs for nostalgia today.

I hope my friends have all the fun in the world in Shadowlands. I’m not likely to join them this time, for the very first time, but I will certainly be cheering all of you on.