So I am an Officer in a small (relatively) raiding Guild on an Oceanic server. We are still new given that we formed late in TBC although we did manage to clear BT before WotLK came out. No SWP for us :-(
Our core founders, myself, Bobdabuilda, Salmon and Tiny are the 'ultimate' power in this guild. We have come - in my own humble opinion - along way given that we started in a social guild before breaking away to join a raiding guild when the social's GM refused to allow us to encourgae raiding past Kara. And when the raiding guild we joined start to loose momentum and the Officers - seemingly - raided content they wanted to for loot they wanted and ignored the players who weren't in the 'inner circle'. In a co-ordinated move we four broke away and formed our own guild from scratch. With abit of luck alongthe way we found some other discontented raiders who joined us, brought friends, assisted recruiting and we slowly gathered a core group of 25 raiders and some social raiders to make up a team to progress. And so we did, for luckily we had Tiny who - though he does exhibit an uncomfortably large nazi like authoritarian streak -is a fantastic raid leader.
But with 'ultimate' power comes great responsibility.
This past week, in an effort to motivate members who had been busy leveling (while we are a raiding guild most of our members are adults [yes we go so far as to ask prospective applicants their age in the application form and anyone 18 or younger is instantly declined] and we are 'hardcore' in how we use our raid time rather than spend every minute everyday raiding) and under the illusion that Naxx and the new endgame content would be easy the way the nerfed BT and MH was, that infact it wasn't easy and we are seruious about them getting their game and gear up to scratch, we started to gkick those members who have not been logging on, were not level 80 in the fortnight we Officers had told them we expected them to level by at the latest. More specifically I started to kick them.
Kicking a player is alot harder than I imagined. One of the players I was directed to kick was online at the time and I couldn't do it to him.
Partly because I empathise way too much with people I guess, and also because I was not - and am not - convinced that the reasonhe was on the list are in anyway adequate enough to warrant exile.
It has been determined by Tiny that Spin ( the player to be kicked) just wasn't part of the team. That he constantly questioned guild policy and strategy decisions, that the DK he decided to take up as main wasn't brought into the guild until it was level 70 (what had he been doing that he couldn't be in the guild?!?!?!?) he wasn't 80 in the required period like the rest of us and even worse (!) he made mention that he had a 2nd DK nearly the same level as his main in the guild (gasp!).
Now I had also been accused by Tiny of playing an alt outsde of the guild because I wasn't on as much as he'd like me to be - Tiny is the kind of player that never does ANYTHING other than play WoW, even though he has a wife and 2 daughters - heaven forbid I actually had real life concerns taking me away from the game, so I wasn't as inclined to see this as as big of a deal as Tiny was.
Bob and Salmon were happy to go along with Tiny's lead in this case I didn't have the courage of my convictions to stand up to him and disagree (choose your battles? maybe, or perhaps it's just cowardice). However when push came to shove I was not able to coldly kick Spin from the guild.
So instead I whispered him and asked him what was going on - why wasn't he 80 yet, that the Officers where under the impression he was leveling another toon outside of the guild, that he was blatantly disregarding the instructions of the Officers which was his right to do but was not conducive to his remaining in the guild.
He didn't have many answers for me other than he was leveling as quickly as he could, that he didn't have another toon and was prepared to present screen shots of his log in screen to prove it. So I told him that I was instructed to remove him from the guild and that I would arrange a meeting with the other Officers for him on Sunday before the raid so he could present his case. He seemed happy with this and I have to assume he really wanted to stay in the guild. Myself, if an offocer had approached me and told me what IU had told him I would have left myself - there is no way I'd play witrh people who didn't want me around. But Spin stayed and prepared to defend himself in a meeting with the Officers.
Now Tiny himself has been playing less then he used to in an effort to spend more time with his family, he passed the reigns of GM to Salmon - which is fine because basically all policy and major decisions are made by the Officers as a whole anyway - and only plays now on the 4 nights aweek that we raid. So on Sunday - as soon as I saw him - I jumped on vent to explain what was going on and that I couldn't kick Spin when he'd been in gchat and interactiong in a friendly and helpful manner (as was regularly the case). Tiny didn't have a problem that I was unable to kick someone who was online and said he'd talk to Spin and tell him his issues before he kicked him.
Ok.
So what? Obviously Tiny's mind was made up and he wasn't prepared to hear Spin's defense.
However we went through the charade of a meeting, Spin present himself well and - to my mind - addressed the issue that Tiny had raised to justify his desire to kick him.
In the end it didn't matter though because Tiny wanted him gone, Salmon and Bob where happy to go along with it and I lacked the balls to say 'No, I don't think your reasons for kicking him are justifiable.'
So Spin was pushed out.
He sorted his stuff with his alts and logged back on his main at which time he announced in gchat that he wished us all the best, that things had worked out for him but he had enjoyed his time in and that he was sure we would do well in WotLK. At this point he then /gquit and I feel crappy about it.
He left with such dignity that and maturity that I cannot quantify in my mind that he is not the calibre of player we wish in the guild.
Rather it was the dictator supremes call and we all followed like mice.
Spin, I am sorry. Good luck to you.
