Incredibly Disappointed

This is a WoW guild leadership post. I don't normally do them, but I was… well… incredibly disappointed and I'm stuck at work where I can't talk to the guy who started it and I need an outlet before I end up verbally punching someone in the gut who might not realize he deserves it.

So… the backstory is that after the breakup of my 25-man guild, about a half dozen or so of us reformed as a 10-man with help from our ex-guildies and new recruits. Everyone who came from the old guild knew the terms. We would raid 10-mans only, no hope of our new guild ever becoming a 25-man. The underlying subtext was, don't come if you're not going to be happy with 10-mans.

At this time, there was a relatively new 80 who only went to maybe one or two 25-man runs before the old guild broke up. He was in blues, totally unsuited for Ulduar and ToC, and was only in the guild because he was a friend of another raider. He hadn't raided before, but he was interested in coming to the new guild. I wasn't sure what to make of him, but we needed people so I gave him a shot.

He worked hard on his gear, running 5-mans day and night (only a mild exaggeration), and was in tip-top shape for 10-man ToC so quickly that we didn't feel we were carrying him. He turned out to be a very enthusiastic raider who watched videos, read up on fights, and wasn't afraid to ask for help to improve his ability to play. He went from a nobody to one of our best dps, a fantastic backup tank, and the makings of backup raid leader. I had figured in a few more weeks I'd probably make that designation official.

Then on Tuesday night he confessed to me that he wanted something more. He had been running with a couple other guilds in their 25-man spots, which I knew about and had told him he could do, but even though he was going with them on a semi-regular basis, he was tired of being "benched" when their own guildies were online and able to go. He decided that he really liked the 25-man raids, so he wanted to go to another guild.

Of all our guildies, he's the one I'd be most forgiving of this. He was new to raiding when he joined us, so he hadn't done the 25-mans unlike the rest of us who actually retired from it. The rest of us have no intention of going back. Some of our newer recruits have even asked to be sure there was no intention of trying to scale up to 25s.

So I told him that I understood, and he said he didn't want to leave us in a lurch so he hadn't applied to anyone yet, but he thought we were in pretty good shape now. I begged to differ, since we're still in active recruitment even two months after we started (need healers) and we even had to pug a couple people on Monday because we couldn't cover the expected absences of two guildies on vacation when a couple other people were unexpectedly absent as well. I told him that and asked him to wait so we could see what things looked like on Saturday once our vacationers came back.

I also thanked him for talking to me rather than just /gquitting and he said he something to the affect of not wanting to do that since he considered this to have been his first real guild. He said if we were ever short-handed after he left he'd be happy to fill in, and that was fine. I have no trouble keeping friendships with ex-guildies who leave in a classy way and it seemed like he was going to do that.

Fast forward to this morning (less than 48 hours later). I went to our guild forums and found a good-bye message from someone else, a friend of this guildie. The friend was quitting because the guildie who I had talked to had already left the guild and the friend didn't see a reason to stay around. Now, what gets me is that the friend, who is a non-raider, bothered to stop by and leave a good-bye message and the guildie did not. I shouldn't have to find out second hand from the guild web site that this guildie who said he wasn't going to leave until he was sure we were in a good spot has already left the guild!

I was not on Wednesday night since I have a weekly RL get-together, so pretty much he could not wait more than 48 hours to tell me before jumping guilds? Am I wrong for being upset?

A part of me wants to not only tell him how disappointed I am that he didn't wait, but that because of his actions I don't think it would be appropriate to extend him an invite to future raids even if we are short a raid spot. But he was well-liked in guild, and since I haven't been on since Tuesday night I don't know how other people feel or if anyone was even on when he left. Maybe they're less upset and more forgiving. He'd only talked to me about sticking around until we were in a good spot.

I have a suspicion that he doesn't actually think he's doing a bad thing. He might not have even been trying to sneak out. My thinking is that when I told him it was okay to start looking around he put in an app, got accepted right away, and the 25-man guild extended him an invite with the expectation that he would immediately join them (since that is usually the way of things) and he did. He probably figured that if he saved his 10-man raid IDs for us he could still be available "as promised" while enjoying his new 25-man guild.

I don't think he's being a jerk so much as he's being thoughtless, which in a way is more hurtful. Because if he was a jerk we'd sign off on him. But this way makes it harder. For instance, do I keep his alts in the guild or do I kick them? Will there be fallout with the other guildies for kicking his alts?

Then there are the logistics in that we will have to replace him. I hate recruiting, but we'll need another dps now. We can't have anyone be absent at this point or we just won't have enough to fill our dps spots. This was not in any way a good time for him to quit!