My Raiders are Five Years Old

This post is very likely to offend some guild members. And I'm not going to apologize for that, because I believe that as a writer and as a Councilor for Memento this post deserves my unvarnished opinions.

Let's start with some good news. Memento has gained a new member! Mord's brother has returned from wow-retirement with a Lazer-Chicken named Hippycrit. Naming decisions aside, Memento is happy to welcome new members.

However, the emphasis is on new member, not necessarily new raider. Our general raid roster is already caster heavy and since we've started doing ICC on a regular basis, Hippy comes to us rather undergeared. This is not problem. As I've said, Noobraid is not about GS. I do wonder, though, if he would have been as quickly accepted if he had joined us through normal recruitment channels.

Also, getting a reputation for nepotism just when we're getting a reputation for being cool, good people would be a terrible blow.

The drama started early last night. Mord is our raid leader the vast majority of the time. He and Militia have the most experience in raid leading and Militia generally isn't interested in doing that at this time. So, Mord was filling up the raid group and we got down to this situation: 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 6 DPS, and 2 empty slots. I asked Takk to switch to his Shaman for heals so we could fit more guildies into the raid because Batra hadn't joined us yet.

Mord did not seem to be a particular fan of this idea. He seemed to want to include a warrior who has been running with us in ICC. This would have been fine if the warrior, or anyone in the raid group could have switched to filling a tank spot. Which, both of our healers could but that would have left us with even more issues.

Guildies come first. We needed to pug a tank for ICC and this was simply not happening. Our illustrious GM suggested a trip to Ulduar instead, being a particularly nice alternative for our new boomkin to get some gear in a location we could actually handle with only 9 people.

It helped that the weekly was Ignis.

We chased Orbit-uary a couple times before giving up and destroying the towers. Ignis was no big deal. We had some fun with the Deconstructor. Mord asked all the dps to pop their cooldowns when the heart first showed up. So we did. And the heart ate it big time. And then we wiped.

Anyway, we took the Deconstructor out the second try. We tackled the Assembly of Iron and won. Hurray, that counts as progression! Kologarn finished out our night's adventure in Ulduar.

All of that is on-screen goodness. I switched to Demonology at Ignis and had a blast the rest of the night. I am a GIANT PURPLE DEMON. What's not to like?

Behind the scenes was a different story. Batra seemed to be having some severe connectivity issues. He disconnected several times between the start of the run and Deconstructor.

Mord reports to Ann and I that, during one of these disconnections, a toon with the name [Mord's real name]sux was online and harassing him. Specifically telling him what a terrible raid leader he is and saying some fairly personal things that I was not privy to. Mord assumes that this is Batra's doing.

Now, there is a history of animosity between Mord and Batra. I don't know where it came from and I don't think there's a way to fix it, patch it up, whatever. So long as it doesn't impede my real life or the guild, I don't have to deal with it. Because of the personal nature of what was said, we have to assume that it was someone in the guild. It's guild business if one member of the guild is harassing another, regardless of whether or not its done on a alt who is not a member of the guild.

I went with the direct approach and asked Batra if he had an alt by the offenders name. He denied it. This is, naturally, the expected response whether he actually does or not. Maybe I thought I could get lucky, I don't know. I went on to ask Mord's roommate if he'd done it, just to cover the possibility of someone else screwing with Mord's head.

Points in Mord's Favor
* Chances are extremely slim that the harasser was not a guildy and Batra was the only member offline during the incident
* Batra has done something similar in the past in regards to Senach

Points in Batra's Favor
* Batra is careful not to deliberately provoke Mord anywhere a guildy can see or hear. I mentioned the history of animosity. In general, Batra goes out of his way to not direct anything he says at Mord.
* We cannot prove or disprove the identity of the harasser.

For the most part, the Council is the ruling body of the guild. The GM steps in only when necessary. We run into an interesting dilemma when it comes to dealing with this issue, though. We have Batra on one side, a Councilor himself, and Mord on the other side, significant other to Ann, who is also a Councilor. So, in my view, two of the three members of the Council who should be dealing with this are too biased to view the issue rationally.

Which leaves... me.

And, despite being the only unbiased Council member, my initial response is something that most people who know me would agree is typical Mara: Deal with it.

I recognize that this is a big deal. I am given to understand the the offender said some things that even I would want to punch him or her for. Unfortunately, this doesn't change the fact that there is nothing I can do about it.

If it was something I had witnessed personally, I think I would have been quick to jump on it. Particularly if it happened in guild or raid, or could be easily traced to a specific guild member. Memento has a set of strict "Don't be a douchebag" rules.

At the risk of sounding like my mom, or anyone's mom really, all I have to say is this: This kind of behavior is juvenile and unnecessary and it will not be tolerated. All involved parties will please act like adults from here on out. And if I find out who did it, expulsion from the guild is imminent.

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