Departing the R&GL Forum

Written around mid June, this is the first in a series of Draft Posts that I’ve finally decided to clean up and publish.  This topic made the cut as I actually posted on the R&GL forum this morning to address an admin kinda thing that I was very involved in at one point. 

As some of you have noticed I posted up in the R&GL Forum that I would be leaving the forum and no longer maintaining the index and general info thread.  I had originally decided to delete the old guides, but thankfully a calmer attitude prevailed and I simply asked that the sticky be removed from the main thread. Below is the post in case you missed it.  I may post if a certain topic really grabs me, but I’ll no longer spend much time there.

Howdy folks.  I have decided to leave most of the official wow forums for the foreseeable future and will no longer be maintaining the Guide List and General Info sticky.  Additionally, I don’t expect to maintain any of the guides I ported over when this forum was created.  If you would like the information I suggest you copy it soon.

I will continue to maintain the archive at acheron-guild.com.  I’ll be writing about Raid and Guild topics on my WoW blog at owlbearmoose.com and will begin posting some of my previous writing shortly.  Feel free to stop by.

I wish all the new guild and raid leaders the best of luck and I thank you for facilitating the best parts of the game!

Yup, that was the nice version of the good-bye post.  Stripping by the social politeness, I left because I was tired of the digs, the insults, the underhand moves at “control” of a forum designed to help each other.  It had gotten to the point that I dreaded browsing that forum.  Add to that the same couple topics repeated ad nauseam and it just wasn’t all that enjoyable.

Additionally, at about the same time I had found myself on the deleted post side of a few issues and after chats with a couple members of the Community Team I decided the WoW forums were not where I should spent much time posting. I must admit that the discussion I had with both these gentlemen left an impression on me. While I disagree with them hiding the double standards on the forum (there’s nothing wrong with them, just be up front about it) and the dumbing down of the WoW discussions, I will have nothing but respect for the way in which they engaged me.

Ok, on to the R&GL specifics:

There have been players over the years who were gifted with three abilities which made them amazing assets to the community. First, they ran very successful guilds.  While some of them were certainly OMG face-melting, super progression guilds, others were more laid back, and there were even some RP guilds represented. Secondly they possessed the assessment skills to know ‘why’ their guilds were successful and how they had developed over the years. Finally, they were gifted writers and had the ability to share their views, experiences, and lessons learned in a way that could be easily understood via the static nature of the forums.

Following that group came the skilled administrators and over the years a series of them took to the task of managing the information so that it remained properly formatted as Blizzard changed to different forums (this happened twice), was properly indexed so that it could be found easily, and spent time directing new forum users to these great guides.  Additionally, another group did a good job of keeping up with the discussion threads and helping folks find what they needed.

When I started playing WoW and I quickly rose to a leadership position in my raid group and found myself trying to learn the nuances of guild/raid leadership.  The resources in the old Guild Relations Forum were indispensable to me.  A lot of the WoW RL/GM that I am today came from thoughts and ideas that I read on those guides and in the various discussion threads.

When the announcement came that Blizzard was launcing the new Community Site and that it would not be moving the threads currently stickied, I began archiving the major threads from the Guild Relations Forum. Those threads and guides had been and were still so important to me.  I couldn’t stand the thought that they would be lost.  You can still find them on this blog as well as over at the guild page.

I began reformatting them so that they could be put up on the new forums but before long I realized there wasn’t going to be a guild leader forum on the new community site.  I began writing to the community managers advocating for them to add to section.  The European site had them, but Blizz decided not to allow them on the US site.  I never did receive a reason why.

In late January I got a heads up that there was a change coming to the forums that I would be really excited about.  Shortly after the Raid and Guild Leader Forum was activated.  I was ecstatic. So many people had been asking for it and now Blizzard was responding in a very positive way.

I had originally hoped that the change in policy had occurred because one of the community managers had stepped up to take an active role in the development of guilds. Afterall Blizz has done a lot this x-pac to drive up the value of guilds. Even though I was disappointed that it was a very “hands off” approach from Blizzard, at least we had the forum.

Even though Bashiok made it clear that it was only a player helping players style forum, there were tons of folks posting suggestions to the UI, the achievement and leveling system, and other guild related topics.  Some of these were amazing suggestions. They were well though out, nicely articulated, and very positive.  When I asked Blizz if they were seen in there, I was told that the Dev’s didn’t read the forum and any suggestions made in the R&GL were lost.  On those ideas that I thought really deserved some attention, I would recommend another forum that might be more appropriate and more importantly get the Dev attention they deserved.

Those posts were not always received well from others in the R&GL.  Finally I gave up and headed out. It was a hard decision to leave a part of the community that think is so important.  After my goodbye post, I received the following in an email fromthe Community Team.  It went a long way in settling my feelings.

Thanks for your contribution to the community and hopefully this means you just want a break from maintaining it and you’re not leaving us, cause you’d be dearly missed! :)

After my previous discussions with various mods and CMs I had figured they would be glad I was gone.  Even though I was still leaving, I left with a little smile on my face.