Perpetually F'ed

I keep being reminded why my old guild, Phoenix Legion is so awesome. I played (a bit) with my little brother's Druid in their Magtheridon raid (he had to leave, he is a paperboy, so he had to get up early) and gawd... Their guild is perpetually f'ed up.

It's supposed to be a raiding guild. For the non-WoW people: Raiding is hanging out with 9-39 other players depending on the level that they raid in which they need to work together to complete an encounter. This is usually a scary dungeon with big bosses that drop "phat lewts". Sounds awesome, but in reality it's alot of waiting, people yelling at eachother, people passing around the blame etc. etc. (Unless you have a good guild, in which you have a team.... like Phoenix Legion)

Their raid started while I was playing GRID, having fun, but if the person next to you isn't invisible, so I screenchecked him once in a while and he filled in the blanks. It started off great: Not enough people for their encounter. Some guilds would do one that requires less players, but instead they called in reinforcements from outside the guild. All day, I've been very annoyed by one of their guildies, who's constantly being an ass, claiming that the top tier encounters are easy, that all other guilds are bad (he claimed that PL only had noobcakes... I let it go.) etc. etc. But... He is the one that gets help. From the guild that screwed me personally once too often. This is the one guild for which I have a perpetual hatred.

To give you a better picture of the player: He plays a Rogue, a melee damage dealing class. Ok, nice, alot of good players are Rogues, but... He has no lockpicking at all. Lockpicking allows you to open doors to shorten some instances, to open chests for more loot, etc. Ok, fine too. One of the most fun people I have ever played with was a Rogue without lockpicking. Let's move on to the fact that this is an alternate character or alt. Meaning that this is the char he plays when not on his main character. His main is a Shaman. Being the owner of a level 70 Shaman, which has over 2 years of raiding experience, I'd know how to play it. Apparently now, as his main does not have the best talents that he can get in his specialisation. He is Elemental, so he should get Totem of Wrath. He doesn't have it.

So they begin with Gruul's Lair, a low-tier 25-man encounter. On the first boss, the Druid set item dropped, which went to another Druid, while my brother wanted it. Badly. After killing the second (and last, for that encounter) boss, another one drops, which my brother wants too. But it goes to the same one. The policy is there that you get one drop per raid and only more if players don't need the gear.

This isn't exactly the first time that he gets screwed over. He gets spots in raids, only to be removed from them a few hours before, so "better people" can make progress. This is a vicious circle, because his gear won't improve this way. Foolishly enough, he doesn't use his rank to get his way. He used to be the Druid Class Leader, until the CL system was abandoned and now he is a regular officer.

So, I'm still playing GRID, almost getting my ass handed to me because I'm not really paying attention (and playing online) and getting sick of the moaning to my left. I tell my brother that he should talk to the guild leader, who is in charge of the loot distribution and the raid rosters. Basically, after the convo the conclusion was that he just could go F himself. Not litterally, but all solutions like a fair point based system to divide loot (like all good guilds do), because now the gear is divided based upon one person's opinion, were shot down with a simple "We've discussed this on the forums."

Gruul's done, so they move about 1.5 steps up the ladder in the 25-man region, to Serpentshrine Cavern. The Rogue/Shaman mentioned earlier starts shouting tactics etc. via the raid chat, begins to tell people what to do, begins to tell the officers what to do and so on. And everybody seems fine with it. Strange. Afaik, you have a RAID LEADER for a reason... to lead a raid. You can't have 25 people trying to lead a raid.

After wiping alot of times, which seemed more of a kamikaze into a brick wall, only to ressurect and try to smash the impervious brick wall again, they took a step down. To Magtheridon it is. After more wiping than in the average bathroom, with the last one being a "royal screw-up", which in fact was a wipe for all but the few that can work together, they finally give up.

I was the one playing for the last few tries on the last encounter and... Well, the raid leader's a total... *insert something bad* He just barks orders, litterally, he just screams them down his microphone and out of your speakers, nobody can do anything right in his opinion and so on. As they gave up, the annoying Rogue/Shaman said in General chat: "Hey Phoenix Legion, I guess you're wiping". PL was raiding there too. The only one left was the Guild Leader, who was the Raid Leader aswell. He replied: "We're already done, I'm the only one left. We've been done for 20 mins now." They started later and finished earlier. Not because they have better gear, but because they don't screw over their guildmates and work like a team.