I really enjoy our guild alliance. The people in the other guild are nice. They have fun playing the game, which helps me have fun playing the game.
But there are little things… little differences in the way we play the game…
Example: We did two joint Kara runs this weekend. Both raids were made up of about half from each guild. The raid I was in went smoothly. Not without wipes, but nicely run.
The other raid was somewhat different. There were disagreements. They wiped. They made little progress. These things happen. We all have bad runs. As word has trickled back, though, it sounds like some of them are laying the blame for the lack of success on players from my guild.
I know the players from my guild who were in that raid. There is one who was new, and he probably made some mistakes. But the more I hear about the run, the more it sounds like a disconnecting healer, poor decisions and bad judgment played a big factor.
This is bound to happen. Placing blame is human nature. The major thing is to be proactive, discuss it and not let any molehills become mountains. I’ve already gone through this with their officers, and hopefully it is all worked out.
Another problem is more of a philosophical one. When my guild did Kara before our blow-up, we were always happy to bring in an undergeared player or two and get them geared up. We would often have a run where one Kara-rookie would walk out with 3 or 4 new epic items. That’s fun. Sure, we would wipe a few times due to mistakes made out of inexperience. And we had to explain every boss fight to the new people. But that was a good experience for everyone.
Our partner guild is not quite so into that. They seem to want Kara to be a speed run, no wipes, just about getting Badges quickly. Some of them are fairly intolerant of wipes, as they consider Kara to be on farm and they should not wipe on farm content. I have heard that sometimes there is unpleasant criticism following a wipe, although it has not happened in my runs. Because of this, some of them don’t want to bring marginally geared players on a run because it slows down the raid and causes repair bills.
I don’t think there is a good way to rectify this. Differences in philosophy don’t change easily. Our approach now is to get enough of our alts Kara-ready so that we can do alt runs with the Kara newbies and get them the gear and experience that they need without rocking the boat.
