Leading and following

I’d been saving this for a time when I didn’t have much to say or was busy. Real life has gone and thrown me a ringer, so I’ll just pass out some link love today.

As you may know, I’m a huge fan of Anna’s blog, Too Many Annas. She’s one of the blogs that I sit down and read when it shows up in Reader, she doesn’t get the skim treatment that I’ve been known to apply. I really enjoy her roleplay stuff, but also her general looks at WoW. I only have a very low level shaman, but I suspect I’ll love her site even more once I get around to leveling Iri. I also love the guest posts that Tarquin has done - the lastest being about fitting roleplaying into raiding. When I told Anna how much I enjoyed reading the post and what Tarquin had to say, she pointed me to another article he’s written, Why Everyone Should…

As Anna herself put it, “Tarquin, being our fearless leader, has had the rather unenviable job of corralling the 25 headless chickens into being 5/6 SSC/ 2/4 TK, and somewhere in there he’s had some time to reflect on all that leadership…” And that’s what his article is about. It’s a look at why everyone should lead a raid - my current favorite reason is “So you can force the frustration out of your voice and cajole the raid into picking it up, running back, and rebuffing while trying not to choke that one mage who just wiped the fucking raid. Again.” Yeah. Those mages. And then he looks at the flip side, too - why everyone should be a member of someone else’s raid.

It’s a well done piece. In the first case, the way things read, you’d think it’s going to be funny. But Tarquin makes some excellent points in an understated manner. It certainly made me stop and think… and appreciate my guild even more. Sure, we all go through this. All those points have come up at one time or another for all of us. It’s good to stop and appreciate each other some time, and appreciate the richness that the game gives us - and the hell we go through for it sometimes.