If I were to do live-blogging on a guild raid night in World of Warcraft — let’s say yesterday night — this is how it would have gone:

One hour before raid invites, 20 guildmates online: Log on, check my character for repaired equipment, combat supplies, and after all the ducks are in a row, zip down to the Stormwind Stockades to farm for some noob alt gear.

Guildmate Convo #1: This rival guild’s alts are sending our guys tells begging for gold, can I deal with this? I think wtf and suggest they /ignore the idiots and, errr, maybe don’t give them any gold?

Convo #2: Offtank_03, aka The Emo Tank, has a serious family issue at the moment but he’ll still be at the raid. I express sympathy and hope that won’t lead to a longer conversation where I’ll need to quote a little Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. I suggest he take the night off, Emo Tank will have none of that. For the Guild!

Convo #3: One of our raiders with dwindling attendance was reclassified to our casual raider rank and wants clarification on that.

I’ll explain: we have two ranks for regular members, one is for those with over 50 percent raid attendance, the other for those with less than 50%. The only difference between the two ranks, other than the name, is that higher-attendance people get invited first to the 40-man raids, and the lower-attendance people are invited next, if there are spots available and based on what classes we need. Everyone on the waiting list earns DKP same as those in the raid, so the lower-attendance people aren’t penalized in that way because they can’t get into a raid. Both ranks bid on loot equally, earn DKP equally, receive guild assistance equally — the only difference is the order of the invites.

We instituted this change many months ago when we noticed the curious relationship between attendance and farm mobs. Once the learning was behind us and a boss mob moved to farm status, suddenly, ALMOST INEXPLICABLY, attendance for that mob and/or zone would skyrocket. (Apparently, real life obligations can go to hell when there’s loot to be had.) Since we used to fill raids first come, first served, you can imagine the ruckus when some yokel who never showed for the learning attempts (read: wipes) got into the farm raids ahead of those who had.

Enter our two-rank system, which has worked wonders to encourage stable attendance. Every evaluation period (about once a month), there’s fresh drama from those guildies that didn’t make the cut and get moved to the lower-attendance rank. I just don’t get that drama. It’s math. Attendance is under 50 percent, you’re not invited first. Big f’ing deal, you go on the wait list, get DKP anyways and you can do whatever the hell you want in game. You don’t like it, get on that wait list more than 50 percent of the time and in a few weeks, BOOM, you’re back to the higher-attendance rank.

So that’s what Tell #3 was about — guy was pissed he got bumped to the lower-attendance rank. We had just done an evaluation the week prior, so I’ve gotten a lot of these tells this week, and they all start off like this: The guild should make an exception because *fill in the blank*. (Y’know, blow me.)

Kinda went on a rant there, where was I? Oh ya, The Stockades. Finished that, flew to Eastern Plaguelands to do some Naxx turnin.

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