I went to TK Very briefly last night to help an old guild out that are rebuilding, I hestitated going to their raid because I had told my guild that I would not be signing up for raids, but I figured, its a friend, it won’t be for too long, and I wanted to help. We Tried twice to kill Void reaver but they didn’t have many experienced people, and without void Reaver alarm its no longer a ‘loot reaver’ On our 2nd attempt the server had kittens and reset sending us all to the start of the instance with all trash reset. So as we are standing there deciding to continue, I get a tell from my GM saying he is disappointed that I was pugging and not raiding with the guild. I was honest and said I’m helping a friend, and its taking longer then I had planned. When TK was called – I logged out from my main, and played an Alt. I am sticking to my decision that I do not want to raid, but I wasn’t in TK to raid. I was there because a friend needed help and they were desperate and I was available.
I don’t question the GM’s ‘right’ to ask what I was doing, but if he really was checking up on me he would have only seen I had been in there for 1/2 an hour, I don’t want to have to avoid logging in at raid times in case something I chose to do gets micro examined. I wasn’t recruited as a raider, they have 2 other shadow priests that were recruited as raiders, I didn’t have to sign up to more then 50% of the raids as per my status level, but if I was online at raid time I was signed up for 90-95% of the raids, and now that I made it clear that I was not raiding, and I can see how it looked, and yes they are a raiding guild, but they have social members, or raiders that aren’t good enough to get invited, and once upon a time I was one of those raiders that wasn’t good enough or needed, and now I am.. ? thanks to who? A class leader that said ” You suck – here are my suggestions… lets see what you can do…” Well that didn’t happen. An honest peice of feedback – “You are’t quite performing where we want you to be, you might want to look at improving.. ” – That never happened,
unless you count the ‘out dsping the tank’ feedback I got when I didn’t lay down and take the ” Well if your not interested in subbing in and out” comment.. when I was on my 3-4 weeks no raid invite… so I have added something to my list of reason why I am not interested in raiding currently..
No Feedback is given –
and with that in mind, In between VR trash kills I saw somone Gquit, and I was lucky enough to catch their farewell message on the forums before it got deleted. His farewell message was apologetic, he was sorry that he wasn’t good enough to be invited to raids, he was sorry that he obviously wasn’t performing well enough for the guild,
I’m not sure he was even off his trial, and he had only been there for a couple of weeks, and yes we wiped once because his misdirect didn’t work as it should, but give him his due he was having difficulty hearing instructions on vent, maybe due to technical reasons or perhaps it was the constant chatting and confusion as to who was calling the shots on that partical raid that was also going on at the same time,
and yes Raid Leaders and GM’s and officers have their own lives, and the administration that comes with that, and yes you should learn to play your own toon, hence why I started reading blogs, and forums, but a player who genuinly wants to improve often needs a poke in the right direction.
when you are recruiting from guilds that aren’t as progressed as you, or recruiting people from guilds that have fallen apart.. You are going to get people who don’t know the intricate details of how the guild rolls in a fight. You need to give feedback so they can correct it, instead of being on your high horse, honesty will not hurt the player anymore then practically ignoring their desire to raid – and I am seeing that far too often.
I plan on sending the hunter who quit some links – just with the advice.. If you really want to be better then you are.. Start *here*… I don’t know hunters.. but I know of people who do….
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Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog 
I understand where you are coming from, but you also have to look at guild perspective. I am in a guild that currently is having problems filling our raids because people just arent showing up.
If a player who raided with us and stopped was online and raiding with another guild while one of our raids are going on, I guarantee you it would piss off a whole lot of people. People are going to start having resentment towards you. For example: We are looking for a 25th member for our raid. A mage who raided all the time is on her shaman alt (who she wants to make her main). She continues on as leveling while we are struggling to get the raid off the ground. People are going to think wtf. When it comes time to invites for instances, do you think people are going to want to help her when she wouldnt help when she was needed? Probably not.
Not so say what you did was wrong, but from a raiding guild perspective, people could see it as disrespectful. You appear to have frustrations with previously not being invited. Should you be ready to raid again in the future, the may not want to invite you again.
This post isnt to slam you or anything. It is just the perspective of someone who raids.
I see your perspective, and we have also been in the position where we did not have enough people online to field a raid, but we have also had times where there have been 18 people wanting to raid sitting out, and I agree it would appear disrespectful, My alts aren’t in guild for that reason, I didnt want to gquit as for the most they are a great bunch of people for the most and if they were in a tight spot and I was available i would help –
I honestly believe that removing posts from a forums when someone leaves feedback (whether positive or negative) is really the worst thing that you can do as a leader. Hiding discontent invariably causes more discontent and in the end that just makes things much more likely to fall apart. The things that should get deleted from the forums are things that are otherwise inappropriate, such as posting images of an adult nature when there are younger players or things typically not allowed by the host (my host has a clause in my contract that content involving blatant racism, balatant sexism, blatant mistreatment of any other person, and other unacceptable topics can result in the termination of my contact).
/endrant
In regards to your current dilemma, I still think communication is the way to go. I’d have probably dropped the raid leader a friendly note saying that I was helping a friend out so that no underlying misgivings would result.
And on the whole communication meme, the fact that you got zero feedback on your performance is awful. While feedback in general is usually welcome, if your performance cost you a raid slot you should have been told what you needed to improve, pointed to resources that could help you improve, and then hands could have been washed of blame. They could have helped your further by saying you’d get opportunity in the future to try out again for your slot, but while that’s what I may have done they’ve completed their social obligations by telling you what you needed to know.
Because otherwise you end up with people sitting in limbo and unable to raid but not knowing what to do — who eventually jump ship.
Just another perspective on raiding commitments and keeping people…
We’re in the lucky position that we get at least 80% raid attendance from our core raiders. We raid 5 nights a week, and anyone who consistently misses more than 1 night will be asked why. What this means is that we have a core team of about 30 raiders: a full 25-man raid and some extras to allow for balancing heals/dps/tanks for different fights.
If you’re a core raider (it’s a separate guild rank), you expect to be in raid. You’ll sit some fights out, but you’ll do it outside the instance in group 6. Everyone WILL see some boss fights every night, unless we’re busy wiping on progression content (Twins at the moment): then we only take our absolute best team.
So there’s a kind of two-way expectation, and I guess this exists in every raiding guild to some extent. The guild expects players to be available, and players expect the guild to let them raid.
If we don’t want someone to be in the raid, subbing in or out depending on raid balance, then we demote them. There’s a reserve raider rank, for people who want a shot at raiding sometimes but aren’t worried even if they go a week or two without spots. They almost never work on progression content, but there are usually a few nights a week with room for a few reserves. Particularly on farm content, we try to sub some of these guys in and give some of the core raiders some “time off”.
Below reserve raider we still have social ranks, and plenty of people in them. Seeing as we’re raiding Sunwell, and MH and BT are on one-night farm, anything below that happens for fun, and socials will often jump into SSC or TK runs on off-nights with a few of the raiders and the occasional pug.
I suppose, because of our core raider/reserve/social structure, we won’t really question socials who pug into raids. We generally wouldn’t invite a social along on a raid anyway, so we don’t mind if they get saved to another run.
On the feedback issue, again, our ranks kinda solve it for us. If we don’t want someone raiding, we basically have to demote them. That’s feedback in itself, but we generally wouldn’t demote someone without some discussion with the person in general.
Oh, I suppose there’s one other type of raider we have: a try-out. They sit at the “reserve” rank, but are taken in as if they were a core raider. Someone generally won’t spend more than a week or so at this rank: either we want them in the raid all the time, or we tell them that they can stay on, but only as a reserve or social.
I do remember one or two “can’t play”-style gkicks, and they usually ended up with the player in question /gquitting rather than being kicked, because they were told about the problems, didn’t respond appropriately, and were demoted.
Just another perspective anyway, hope it’s useful.