Raid Leader Rant 3: Owning up to your mistakes, or not.

Hi folks, 

This is the third instalment of RLR (Raid Leader Rant) and covers an area that I know frustrates, annoys and really angers not only me but other players and definately other RL's that I talk to. Before I vent some steam in the actual rant I want to cover a few points that I hope will help to explain why I find people not owning up to their mistakes not only frustrating and rude but deceitful and showing of a complete lack of regard for their team mates.

We've all been on a few wipe nights, the raids where nothing goes right, wipes occur on areas that should be cleared easily or progression content that is still being learnt and everyone is getting more and more frustrated. People make mistakes, it's human nature and part of the game, let's face it without a few wipes there wouldnt be a sense of accomplishment when an encounter is finally completed and the purplez looted, but what about taking the positives out of a night of wipes?



Most people would go away feeling that the night was a waste of time, gold and energy but every wipe is a step forward to success and another opportunity to learn. It's here where we encounter the "It's never my fault" raider, these people dont just stop progress they actually break guilds. Every member of the team should be able to put their hand up and say when they made a mistake, this helps to do a number of things. The first is to promote accountability. If I put my hand up to say I didnt move fast enough or I missed executing part of the tactics properly then we know what went wrong and I am accountable to everyone in the raid, this in turn means that I dont want to repeat the mistake for fear of looking like a complete idiot in front of the people that I respect. But why do I respect them in the first place? Well it's simple, it's because they put their hand up and admit their mistakes and are making themselves accountable to me and I like that, transparency and trust are signs that people are after the same goal of success and progress above making themselves out to be infallible and uber. I like to know that it was a bad execution of good tactics rather than bad tactics before I start changing things.

That level of transparency and honesty is something I recommend to every Raid Leader that they try to get instilled into their team. Unfortunately it's not something that all of them will happily subscribe to, especially if there are any from outside of your guild or even from outside of your normal core raiding team.

/Rant on

The people that dont put their hand up, keep people waiting around trying to work out what went wrong and checking combat logs, pointing the finger at someone else or blatantly denying that they could have made a mistake because they are omnipotent, rather than the truth that they are more impotent than omnipotent, and in denial. These are the ones that you should come down on like a ton of bricks.

Everyone makes mistakes, have a backbone, admit you caused the death of your team mates, at least do yourself a favour and salvage a bit of respect for being honest and give the rest of your team the chance to get it done properly on the next try. The same concept applies all around, if your struggling with a job you have been assigned say something to your RL, dont just sit there like some dumb ass and pretend everything is fine while you wipe again.

Quite honestly i've seen idiots like this on many occasions and that's why you need to run a failbot addon and a few other bits and pieces. I'm not going to kick someone from the raid for a single mistake, keep repeating it though and your toast as well as an idiot, dont admit to it and your likely to keep repeating it because all your doing is denying the truth. Put your hand in the air and shout out, "I made a cock up and i'm sorry now can we try again?" If you cant do that and you get caught repeatedly you will be told to GTFO of my raid and stop wasting our time. Be warned, I am watching and I will act on people not being responsible for their actions.

Your not better than the rest of us, your not somehow bathed in gold, your just the same so get your head out of your ass and play as a team or go off and salivate over your own awesomeness in a pathetic little corner. The people who earn the title awesome and uber are people who dont have to give those titles to themselves.

/Rant off

I'd be interested to know anyone elses thoughts on this kind of attitude and how long do you tolerate failure before you take action? Do you try to help first and sort out the problem or adapt to it and work around it? or do you tend to kick first and just replace with someone who knows what to do right away?

Whatever your comments i'm interested to hear them, this post has also given me a reason to put together a full list of RL tools to check for idiots :)

Cheers folks,

Cyb

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