I've actually always been a fan of Greg Street, aka Ghostcrawler. I do not possess the kind of personality that enables me to go out on forums and allow people to rip me apart - but he does it every day.

So I was really sad when yet another forum thread turned into "let's rip GC apart and talk about what a failjob he does" and this time, GC seemed to actually get frustrated enough about it to want to back off. I could link you all the relevant WoW Forums posts, but instead, just check out the article at wow.com.

When did offering suggestions and creative ideas to developers morph into constant QQing? Why all the negativity? I've made my own posts before giving my own thoughts about where I think the developers have it wrong, but in spite of all that, I never took it down to the level where I declared that Greg Street should be fired, he does a terrible job, blah blah blah. So instead of all the negative mumbo jumbo so prevalent in the WoW community, let's try something different.

The Opposite of QQ: Dear Ghostcrawler, Priests are Awesome.

• Remember back when you guys nerfed Circle of Healing and gave us a cooldown? We grumbled, but we all knew that it was necessary, because CoH was just too awesome. And it's STILL uber-awesome. I'll even forgive you for the Prayer of Healing nerf - because it was OP as well.
  
• What other class gets two significantly different healing specs?
  
• I'm sure it's happened before, but aside from a few VoA runs where you really want to diversify your raid mix of classes due to gear drops, I've never been turned down from joining a raid simply due to my class. Everyone wants a priest.
• When I tell people of other guilds I have a level 80 raiding priest, they drool, and try to recruit me. 
• I know everyone whines about the priest leveling process. Yes, it's rough. But after leveling several priests, I've figured out that the first 10-20 levels are a nightmare - and 20-40 is a blast.
  
• Lightwell IS awesome. Developers keep making it awesomer. It's not their fault everyone else sucks.
  
• We are the original healer, the ultimate in healing. We are well-rounded, with a little bit of everything. Is there room for improvement in certain details? Of course - we could all use tweaks. But don't ever misunderstand me. My class is absolutely awesome.
• I realize I can't really speak to Shadow Priest viability in a raid... maybe all the complaints are well warranted. But from my experiences, everyone is happy to have a Shadow Priest (or several!) in the raid as well.
  

Balancing a Class

It can't be easy. Personally, when I look at class balance, I think of a few particular things:

• Option for strong solo DPS
  
• Good Raiding balance (DPS or Heals)
  
• PvP Viability (DPS or Heals)
  

Shadow is actually pretty weak for solo DPS before level 40 - IMO, Holy is stronger. Back in BC, a strong Holy/Disc mix would actually net you much stronger single player DPS than Shadow - Shadow didn't actually do that much damage - it was more of a support role.

This brings us to raiding balance. For healing, we have two very different, very solid options. Disc still needs considerable tweaking, but that is not a surprise - Disc is very different from any other type of healing offered by healing classes in this game, so it's bound to have different kinds of difficulties in development. Holy is FINE. Of course I'd love little changes here in there, but overall? Holy is well rounded and solid. So what about Shadow? QQ we don't do enough damage, wanh.

Now, I will put in the disclaimer that I am certainly no expert on s-priesting, so feel free to take all of this with a grain of salt. But Shadow does a helluva lot more damage than it did back in BC. There was a tradeoff involved there - Shadow Priests had to sacrifice a lot of their support role strength (i.e. mana battery ftw) in order to gain those increases in DPS. But even with those changes, Shadow Priests are STILL strong support roles. We need the Replenishment. We can be a lot more flexible with our allotment of raid healers if we have a couple of shadow priests and their Vampiric Embrace. Misery makes sure everyone really IS hit capped. With all those bonuses that make you a fantastic addition to any raid, you cannot expect to top the damage meter. That is the meaning of BALANCE.

I'll completely avoid the whole PvP discussion, because I'm a noob at PvP, but I just want to say that the other day, on my Forsaken priest, I MCed someone off of a cliff in Arathi Basin for the first time ever. And DAMN it felt good.

The point of all this is to QQ about the QQers. You cannot have everything in one spec. Ideally, you would have a little bit of everything in one class, mixed up between various specs, but even that is not always an option. LoLSmite priests actually do a TON of damage, for the record - raiding included. But they aren't tweaked for raiding viability (such as hit rating, etc), and it's something that I hope Blizz puts some more thought into for the future.

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The short answer, in my opinion, is Yes. I am a firm believer that each individual not only has the right, but also the responsibility, to be well informed and make decisions for themselves about what to do for their own protection.

The long answer? It's complicated.

Let's go back to That Guy in trade, whose entire justification for shouting NINJA in all caps is to warn others. Looking at it from this perspective, it absolutely makes sense. Yes, they absolutely have a right to know. And the best person to tell them is the officers, because that enables the leadership to control the way the information is released, in an (ideally) unbiased way.

In the security world, classified documents are only to be released and discussed on a need-to-know basis. If I took a similar approach to discretion amongst officer decisions, it brings me to the debate over the difference between right-to-know information, and need-to-know information.

The problem lies in knowing where to draw the line. As officers, we encourage others to come to us privately if they have any complaints or things they want to discuss. We want to foster open communication between officers and non-officers. In order to preserve this communication, it requires a lot of discretion on our part. The unfortunate part of this required discretion is that we are often perceived as some power-hungry clique of officers, sheltering secrets.

If WaltTheWarrior comes to me and complains that he doesn't like the way HarryHunter bosses people around in vent, it is my responsibility to take care of the problem (assuming it really is one) without telling HarryHunter specifically who all has complained. Harry doesn't need to know this information that might make him bitter - if the complaint is a legitimate problem, it is our job to take care of it. We have to be confrontational for all the non-confrontational people. It's really not fun.

When players have a problem with one another, they do not HAVE to come to us. If they so choose, they can communicate directly to the person who offends them. That is their right, and if they choose to do this, we can only hope they do it with maturity. But, that having been said, it's none of our business if two players decide to hate one another, as long as they act properly whilst in a raid. We aren't your life counselors. If players who cannot get along choose to use the guild/raid/alliance chat or forum to air their grievances, it now becomes our business - this isn't the place for it, children, fight elsewhere.

Once you bring the officers into the problem, you have to expect that we are going to treat it with the same discretion we treat every other problem we encounter. If an officer cannot treat these scenarios with discretion, they should not be an officer.

When you agree to join a community and follow their rules, once you bring a problem to an officer and expect them to handle it, you no longer have control over how that problem is handled. We're supposed to be unbiased (and most of the arguments amongst officers are based around trying to achieve that lofty goal) and that means that what YOU think should happen is no longer all that relevant.

If you don't like the way your guild is run, you are absolutely free to start your own. This is not a "piss off" or "take it or leave it" statement. It's simply logical fact. We can't make everyone happy. If you want things to be a certain way, then take responsibility for it yourself, and DO it yourself by starting your own. Hell, I've considered doing this myself quite often.

Reputations are very important in the WoW Raiding scene - and this can be tricky to handle amidst the ever anonymous internet. Serious accusations, taken too far, can ruin someone's raiding career. What if it really WAS just an accident? I'm all about letting the voice of the people speak for themselves, but I get very concerned when emotions run high and the mob mentality begins to surface.

The thing is, do you announce an issue if it turns out that it is a NON issue? Do you tell all the members "hey someone was accused of Ninjaing, but after a week spent researching the issue, we have decided that is not really the case." That is going to turn into "shouldn't all guild members be allowed to make the decision about whether or not that is the case? Like a jury of your peers or something?"

Well, that is an incredibly valid suggestion, and this is why I have been so on the fence about how to handle these situations. I have come to the decision that discretion is the better part of valor. Do I expect all the guild or alliance members to faithfully trust my judgment and simply agree to do what I say? Absolutely not. I do, however, hope they understand that I, as an individual, do my very best to represent them and make decisions that will benefit them as a whole.

Author's Note: I actually wrote this Monday, and am only posting it now. Yesterday, there was a very interesting post by Elnia over at the Pink Pigtail Inn on a very similar topic to the things I have been writing about this week. It's really entertaining when several people in the Blogosphere seem to have the same ideas at once!

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How should officers respond to a loot drama/ninja QQ/zomg-i'm-disconnecting-the-internet situation that breaks out all over their forums?

The next time you and your wife start having a screaming argument, I want you to test out a theory for me. Take a big piece of duct tape and put it right over her mouth. There! Argument over! After all, if you can't hear what she's bitching about anymore, doesn't that mean she's NOT bitching?

I give you about a 99% chance of this backfiring horribly, and you being kicked in all your naughty places.

So why would freezing or deleting a forum thread in which people are complaining be any different?

Back in my LiveJournal days, I used to be in all these LJDrama communities that would ridicule other communities for how poorly they reacted to and festered dramas. The number one way to get your community featured on LJDrama was to delete comments, lock threads, or delete entire posts. Here are some of the reasons why:

• Own your words. Possess them. lovingly caress them. Whatever. If you're going to take the time to type it out, take that time to calm yourself down. Read it after you type it folks, and consider carefully before you post it - because once you post it, it's out there, and deleting it does not mean that no one read it (or screenshotted it, for the record).
  
• If you delete a thread, you delete the source of FACT in the drama. If the thread in which people were acting like an asshat no longer exists, you can no longer quote from said thread and show it as evidence of your argument when someone is being a dbag. It merely becomes more he said-she said. In internet drama situations, the only thing just as important, or possibly moreso than what people DID is what people SAID.
  
• Freezing a thread says "We don't want this to be discussed anymore" while inadvertently encouraging more people to discuss it, just privately. Is that better or worse than it being discuss publicly? I guess it depends on the situation. People QQing in private usually ends in waking up one day with half your guild gone, and not knowing why. If you play the heavy handed forum nazi, you just won't KNOW what people are bitching about - but it doesn't make them stop bitching.
  

And I'm a complete hypocrite for the record - I can remember one time in recent history where I made a post pointing out a problem, I was shot down by a fellow officer, and in my anger, hurt, and humiliation, I deleted my post. No one seemed to care anyway, but I felt really guilty about it afterwards.

I also understand why officers may delete drama-infested threads. Putting all the drama out there in public discourages drama-reluctant, rational people from raiding with your group if they see it going on in your forums. Deleting it reduces the chance that people will see it and be turned-off by it. But it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Same goes for locking threads. You might lock a thread that is no longer constructive to the greater whole because it will just inspire more drama. I do get that, I understand why we do it - but if you look at it from the other side, from the viewpoint of the individuals who do not have the power to lock or delete threads, that is NOT what it looks like. It looks like someone is being shut up because they were questioning your authority. I am not at all saying this is, in reality, the case. I'm just pointing out, for better or for worse, that's what it looks like.

And in addition, who decides whether or not a thread is constructive any longer? Just because you don't think it's constructive doesn't mean that another person in that thread isn't learning something or getting something important out of it.

When it comes to deleting threads, just remember this: Maybe you have a right to delete your own words, but once you start deleting the words of others, you have now stolen their voice. It's a slap in the face. For some posters, maybe they need a good solid slap in the face. But it's happened to me, a thread in which I've been commenting has been deleted, and it pissed me off.

I'm not criticizing the officers who choose these sorts of actions, so don't get ticked at me if you've done it. I see the reason behind doing it. But I do cringe when it's done, even if I know there's no better alternative. When you are trying to get control of a situation, I guess sometimes you have to do stuff like this. It's easy for me to criticize it, but to be honest, I really don't know of a better alternative. That's the thing about drama, there's no way to get yourself completely out of the black hole.

I do, however, sympathize with the non-officers who feel insulted by threads they were reading or to which they were contributing being deleted or frozen. Unfortunately, there's no politically correct way to tell these people that all of this effort is more than likely simply an attempt to shut one annoying individual up. You know. That Guy.

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I start my new job today, so my blogging time might be severely diminished. I know, what are you folks going to do without my giant wall of text? Due to some alliance drama over the past week, on which I have been uncharacteristically silent (by request, mind you), I've held back most of my thoughts on the situation. But now that I've organized them, I want to put it all out there. I started writing a post this morning, and an hour later, it was about ten pages long, so I'm going to break it up into several posts over the next few days.

Are you ready... FOR THE DRAMA LLAMA?

That Guy

You know that guy who runs to trade channel and screams in all caps about someone being a ninja? It's usually related to a raid that was just run, or a dungeon, or quite possibly a crafter's trade. I spend a lot of time reading trade chat; I assure you, it happens about once every two hours. What is amazing is that as much as folks secretly love drama in all their little dirty places, that guy is usually shot down pretty quick with a bucket load of reason and rationality.

The thing is, once you come scream to trade channel about your woes, you immediately become that guy and no one likes that guy and your entire argument about how someone ninjaed your loot or cheated you on a trade or anything of the kind just becomes annoying, and a really great thing for which anonymous internet people can ridicule you.

In fact, it doesn't even matter how completely reasonable your complaint was. More than likely, it's the way you declare someone's ninjaness; how you announced it. If you're calm, rational, and handle it with maturity it will go over much better. After all, it's not a bad argument to say that the reason you are announcing someone's dishonesty publicly is to protect other would-be raiders or crafters.

The word Ninja is like the word Racist. Anyone can use it and cause a controversy, can stir up emotions, can get people rankled - but just because someone says it does not, in fact, make it true. It is actually a very serious accusation, and it should not be thrown around lightly. In addition, it should be TREATED as a serious accusation by officers. Don't blow the accusation off, or it will come back and bite you in the ass. Which is exactly what happened to us.

So therefore, why should you expect to be treated differently when you make such a big ruckus about a supposed "ninja" within the ranks of your guild? If you cannot be reasonable, rational, and mature about it, then let's face it: You are just a drama queen. Nothing anyone does will satisfy you except complete and utter vengeance and kicking the so-called "ninja" out. Even if you're wrong. Even if you misunderstood events.

That Guy in trade chat is usually shot down quickly by people offering rational suggestions for how he or she might have misunderstood the situation. Perhaps it was an accident. Perhaps the rules should have been clarified. If you want to see how reasonable the average anonymous person can be, watch the questions that result from That Guy whining in trade chat.

I have announced bad behavior over trade channel once, when one of the mages in our pug took all the dream shards and abyss crystals from our run, and at the end put down a port to Darnassus instead of Dalaran. I tried to whisper him and figure out if it was all a mistake. I followed him around Dalaran and told him to please trade the DE mats to me, because they should have been rolled for. He completely ignored me. When I finally resorting to announcing his behavior in trade (very hesitantly and maturely I might add), two of the officers from his guild whispered me, gave me abyss crystals, and apologized for his behavior. I later received an in-game mail from him apologizing for it too - he said he was having a very bad night, and acted very rudely.

Yesterday in trade someone told a story about how he brought his mats to a crafter who was advertising over trade. The crafter took his items, made the piece, and held the item hostage until the player forked over 100g. This crafter was still advertising in trade, and now everyone knew that if they wanted their crafted items, expect to pay a required 100g "Tip" - it's not a fee when the crafter doesn't tell you up front. The person who complained to trade channel was ridiculed non-stop - not because he wasn't justified, but because it took forever to get the facts from him, instead of just listening to him QQ.

The moral of these stories is that announcing improper group or trade behavior in trade channel is not necessarily a bad thing. It can be beneficial to the community as a whole - if you handle it properly, and release the information with dignity and maturity.

So if you want to start complete drama within your guild by screeching NINJA in your largest caps, be prepared for the backlash.

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