Notes

You were the one who recruited me into this guild and community, and you’ve followed Silver’s progress from when you left to me taking over. I’ve always been honest and straight forward with you, and I would hope that you would read and hear what I have to say. Your community has been disrespectful to me and every member of the team that you created and that I have worked tirelessly to build, support, reform, and keep going since I first joined your team back in 2016.

I have never been anything if not blunt, honest, and forthcoming to you and others. I did not join this guild to become an officer, much less a team leader. I was a person who wanted to raid and help out to maintain the raid team I was a part of. I was happy to help with recruitment, and I certainly never asked to become the Team Leader when Scyon quit. I was upfront throughout my tenue in the guild that I was not interested in doing more than leading my little team and that I didn’t have time to participate in greater functions. When Quicksilver started having officer meetings, I said up front that I was unavailable at the time they selected (7 PM Central) as I run a business and since January of 2017 I have done live sales of the product that I sell in my business on Sunday night’s at 7 PM. My business and income, as I have limited means while a full time student, are far more important to me than an officer meeting for a game.

Despite my busy schedule, I have devoted time to maintaining the Silver raid team. In December, Scyon, before quitting the game, recruited a group of 5 cross-realm players to raid with us. They said up front that they were not interested in transferring to another server and just wanted to raid. Scyon entered the bargain with them that they would raid with us without transferring, and when I took over the team I saw no reason to change what he had already done, as it was working for us. When I had worked to recruit more and more members and had some of them leave due to not fitting in with our raid team, I met with Quicksilver and I told him that we raided with our cross-server team members, that they weren’t interested in transferring, and that I didn’t set up the arrangement so I didn’t feel a need to change it. I said maybe they would become interested in transferring if they saw what the community had to offer, but I was not going to force it. Since then, I’ve recruited many people, all who have transferred to this server and to Ex Inferno. Because I did not enter into the agreement with our cross-server counterparts, I thought it was particularly rude of me to tell them they had to transfer to continue raiding, because that wasn’t what Scyon arranged with them.

When you started Silver, you utilized Discord. We continued to utilize discord until one day Quicksilver deleted all the channels and said “We are a TeamSpeak guild, you have to use Team Speak”. This was off putting to many of the raiders who didn’t like team speak, but we followed directions and utilized Team Speak. When the guild suddenly decided that Discord was acceptable to use again, it allowed me to be more involved, as I could easily access Discord from my phone when I was working or in class all day. I started advertising the extra activities that Ex Inferno was doing in an effort to draw Silver more into the community as it was now easier to interface with. My schedule has been slightly more open lately, as we are going into full time clinical rotations and have less homework, so I tried to become more involved with guild activities. I have recruited members for both Pink and Green, I have taken members in the guild into normal TOS raids to help them with gear, and I have been able to be on to do some Mythic+ activities. Green and Silver did a few off night raids together and got along quite well in our style and leadership. We were participating in the community and our cross-server folks were actually starting to meet more people from Ex Inferno because of the Discord use. Of course, I maintained that I was not going to force anyone to transfer. I built Silver up on the server slowly to where we had 8 active, full time raiders in the guild. Building too quickly is what led to our earlier issue where a group left – we tried to recruit too fast and we ended up with people who did not fit in to our team or the community and thus we wanted to be careful before bringing more in. I worked for many hours talking to and vetting players, trialing them in raids prior to inviting to guild, etc.

After one of the raids that I encouraged Silver to participate in, a heroic Night Hold run, multiple members of the Silver team complained to me about the inefficiency of the raid and how it wasn’t very fun for them. Several of the cross-server guys had come but they got so frustrated with the raid they left and didn’t finish the instance. When Quicksilver said in officer chat that they wanted to form a Mythic team that drew from all teams, I knew that Silver raiders would be a solid addition to the team, but felt that it was necessary to bring up their concerns with raid leadership, length of time between pulls, and time spend in boss encounter explanations. A mythic raid that was viable might have motivated some of our guys to transfer from cross-server finally, and that would have benefitted the community, but after their experience in that Heroic NH alt run, they were wary of further participation in raids. I have never been opposed to Mythic content, and wanted to support the formation and be able to encourage Silver raiders to participate. In addition to sharing their complains, I discussed in officer chat that we would need to ensure appropriate personal accountability in order to down Mythic encounters, and that perhaps if we had inexperienced raid leaders we need to arrange a mentorship or training program to give them the skills they require and help them succeed. I was told that my comments were “bashing” other officers and were “not constructive” when my entire goal was to make it so that we had a mythic team that was welcoming to raiders by addressing their concerns. I apologized if my comments were taken as offensive, but as I am a very direct person, I sometimes don’t filter well, and thus I did apologize for any unintentional insult. My goal was to address raider issues, which I feel was completely blown off.

Then in officer chat, I saw a discussion where they started talking about wanting hookers in exchange for activities including objectification of women with commentary like wanting a “Japanese red headed natural”. I was uncomfortable with this as it bordered on human trafficking type comments, which is about the only ‘off limits’ thing I don’t find something to joke about. I said in officer chat that I wanted to point out to everyone that some people may not fine objectifying women and this type of conversation to be very friendly. I was completely blown off because “someone’s wife participated”. I said that didn’t make it ok for everyone, and that I was kind of offended by the line of thought, and just wanted to point out that maybe it wasn’t creating an environment where I personally felt welcome or respected because I can empathize with a women being seen as an object in exchange for services. This rubbed me the wrong way that our community of officers blew off my concern, but I said nothing further on the matter.

And then last night, when I received Soulsyphons message that I was “butting heads” with officers (I’m sure due to the feedback I provided from my raid team on the way the alt NH was run) and that I thought the leadership was “weak” (a word I never used, but I assume is in relation to the alt NH comments, but honestly I have no idea), that I “suddenly” took offense (in the past two weeks, aka since we started using Discord and I was able to participate more actively in the community) – but this was ONE comment where I was offended (but that, I guess, is grounds enough for removal?) and I didn’t even make a big deal about it. I simply stated that it was offensive to me and maybe we could think about that. I was berated for not attending officer meetings despite being “online” during meetings. I never log out of discord. My discord is always online. But I have, as I already stated, a business to run and that happens at 7 PM Central every Sunday and I’ve been doing it long before they started having officer meetings.

This past Sunday, yes, I was on for 15 minutes of meeting. I had cancelled my business event because I had an important conference call for a non-profit organization that I hold an officer position in. Our alt-run had gone longer than normal, so I was dialed into the conference call during the last 15 minutes of our raid (until 715 Central) and called the raid because I couldn’t double task Kil’Jaeden and being on my important conference call. I’m sorry that I have a business and other things that are more important than gaming, but I said up front that I was unavailable for meetings at that time and they still selected that time for meetings. I said I couldn’t attend. If they needed my attendance, they should have picked a time I didn’t expressly state I was unavailable. They ended with stating that I didn’t “serve the community” or “fulfill my duties” as an officer, despite running Silver since January, doing constant recruitment to run the team, having silver be the ONLY active raid team for a majority of Nighthold content when Pink was on hiatus, bringing multiple people into the community (since the entirety of Silver was new other than Bob and Mike), doing recruitment for both Pink AND Green, and inviting members of Ex Inferno to join Silver-run alt raids and experiences (something Green took us up on, and some new recruits, but no one else did).

The really offensive part of the length message SoulSyphon sent me was “You criticize Ex Inferno leadership but in truth what have you done, you can’t even get your team members to move over to this server and get true guild achievements to advance the community, no that is left on Pink to accomplish and now Green.”. This is just beyond offensive to me. First, I never criticized any other leadership. I brought up grievance expressed by multiple Silver raiders AND offered ideas on how we could fix it by offering training and mentorship to new leaders. Second, I did not enter into the agreement to have a cross server team, and I had previously discussed that I didn’t feel right forcing them to transfer since it was against the initial agreement made with Scyon, and no one EVER brought up to me that this was an issue to them. In fact, EVERYTHING that SoulSyphon mentioned about my “failures” and “problems” had never been brought up to me. A guild with true respect for people and integrity doesn’t make a decision among themselves and then kick someone out. They address the issue. They make clear what their expectations are (I thought my job was to run my team, and I did that, so how do I fail as an officer?).

I have already seen people tell me that the stories they are telling about why they kicked me is that I did not heed the “core values” of the guild. But I have not once lied or acted with anything less than what my moral integrity dictated, and that includes telling people when members of the guild have a concern. To me, that is the primary role of an officer. If other officers were offended to hear what the guild members thought, the problem is NOT the messenger, it is that they didn’t want to hear the message. I apologized for any offense and I have always been entirely respectful to everyone in conversation.

The leadership of Ex Inferno, on the other hand, did not feel the need to be respectful in kicking me out of the guild. They did not feel the need to hold a respectful conversation with me to express any concerns they had. They did not feel the need to respect my team by allowing me to tell them anything that had happened. They did not respect me or my team by not offering the opportunity for open discourse to address any issues they have. And in doing so, Ex Inferno has lost members of the community who offered the guild many things, because they feel that I have been greatly wronged by the situation. And I have been wronged. Because your officers lack respect for me as a person and failed to initiate communication. There were no expectations set to me as an officer, yet I failed to uphold them. There were no comments to discuss why they may have been offended, it was simply a closed subject. A guild doesn’t work that way.

The Ex Inferno guild has hemorrhaged over the past months in WoW. That is why it came down to SILVER being the only team that was left for a while. All the Mythic team raiders on Cyan left. Do you think this is a problem with them, or a problem with Ex Inferno? Maybe the officers are actually the ones that lack respect, and fail to adequately identify their expectations or handle grievances. It seems they were not interested in grievances, as I was told it was inappropriate to say these things in officer chat. Where else is it appropriate to air grievances? The problem is in your community leader, not in me, and not in my raiders. You cannot lead a community by giving people NO opportunities to discuss and grow. You cannot lead a community without giving clear expectations. And most of all, you cannot lead a community when you would rather kick someone out of the guild and lose an entire raid team of productive guild members because you can’t handle criticism and fail to open a line of respectful discourse with a party you disagree with.

I will add that I did not ask ANY of my raid members to leave with me. I messaged all of them in discord and said I was happy to continue to lead the raid time whether people were in Ex Inferno or elsewhere. I did not ask ANY of my raid members to defend me, or comment on the activities of the leadership of Ex Inferno. But many of them have told me they have spoken out on my behalf. They have been kicked, banned, and comments deleted. I know some of them were not particularly polite about it, but I think it shows something of the fact that I have both RESPECT and INTEGRITY, the core values that I was accused by Quicksilver of NOT having, that my raid team chooses to defend and follow me after my unceremonious removal from the guild.

When SoulSyphon messaged me, I could have said “fuck you”, ninja’d the guild bank, or any number of things to be petty if my goal was to leave or harm the community. Instead, I attempted to talk to him to resolve any issues. I was met with absolutely no interested in discussion, I was not asked to join discord to speak, and the decision is already made. This is not respect.

If you want the community you started to continue, then I hope you will listen to the words I have said and realize that it is not my actions that harmed what Ex Inferno is – it is the actions of the community leaders who have harmed the community.

I hope you will read the words I have written and actually listen, and give what I have to say the thought it deserves, and provide me with the respect that the other community leaders did not but actually engaging in discourse and seeing the real problems.