I value time. In fact, I value time above all else, I really believe it's the only commodity that you never get back. I'm not a religious man, I hope something great happens when you die, I'll settle for something interesting, the thought of nothing terrifies me.
So when I say I'm a "recovering" World of Warcraft player with (well) over 100 days /played over three years (not ultra-hardcore, but reasonably so) and I haven't logged in for over two months, many people would probably react in utter confusion as to how somebody that values his time so highly can so fruitlessly waste it on a repetitive game like WoW.
It'd probably also surprise you to know that when I look back on my life and mentally prepare the list of "things I regret", I don't think that spending three years playing WoW will be on that list. There are lots of things I regret about playing Warcraft. I regret missing films, the odd social event, I regret angering my partner, I regret putting on weight, I regret being the caricature that South Park made so famous, but I don't regret playing the game.
I spent a good year and a quarter of my time playing WoW as an officer and raid leader in a medium sized, social, adult raiding guild (hello "Home of the Ghost Lords"!) and I loved every second of it. I spent a good four months driving home from work during my lunch hours to plan raids, running through sign-ups for that evening. I spent all my evenings reading up and planning subsequent raids, and I spent the time in between raid start and getting home quickly raid-prepping whilst eating off my lap. Sounds like the rock and roll lifestyle, I know.
The funny thing about a medium to large sized Warcraft guild is that it functions as a tidy little ecosystem representative to some degree of the larger world, much like high school. Only in this world, instead of teens desperately trying to find themselves, you're paired with adults with the largest sense of entitlement you'll ever meet. That's not a criticism per se, it's just the attitude that emerges regardless of best intentions. The other curious thing that emerges, is that you start identifying the traits of natural leaders easily.
A natural leader, in any realm, is a rare and delicate commodity. I'm no fan of middle management and business meta-work and I believe that anyone that desires to have power over their peers should never be given an ounce of it. That's the archetype of a bad manager at work, someone obstructive and destructive to a team dynamic. World of Warcraft encourages the most unlikely of natural leaders to come forward and do what they do best, they naturally lead.
There's a very special kind of chemistry that just works when a raid is planned by somebody that nobody will argue with. They don't not argue because the leader has a singular vision that's universally approved. Often far from it, they don't argue out of respect and trust in someone with such presence that they're willing to see through the raid on his judgement alone.
These are the people you need leading your business projects, your art projects, your rock bands. These are your superstars, your thinkers, and the people that should be given control, often without themselves realising it.
You learn a few things when you're managing a team of 25-40 people every night. The first thing you learn is how to say no. In business, it's easy to say no, any unobservant middle manager type can say no to something. Try saying no to 10 people who are paying for the privilege to attend. Once you learn how to say no with tact and grace, you never forget. You learn politics far surpassing your average workplace micro-dramas. You learn team selection. You learn to play to individual strengths and weaknesses with subtlety. You learn how to use humour to control a crowd and how to be serious to drive one. You learn to trust strangers to do their jobs. But most importantly of all, you learn how to keep moral up (WoW wipe nights aren't anyone's idea of fun).
You also start to notice the anti-patterns and their real world equivalents. You notice the meta-workers. Anyone that's played the game will be able to identify them. The rogue that browses wowhead for 16 hours a day checking out gear upgrades only to stop raiding when he achieves them. You know who to flag up as a no-show or unreliable team member, you can identify the middle managers of the world, the players that re-open endless debate on trite subjects of non-interest just to make a noise. The sales people / DPSers that are all talk and no performance. And you always notice the people that just never meet deadlines, whilst simultaneously hoping that they're not your healers.
You also notice that however hard they try, people that just aren't leaders will never be able to learn to be.
I'm a software developer by trade, so there's a certain amusement value that comes from seeing these same stereotypes in the work environment, purely because the type of mind that's conducive to working in IT and the type of person that plays RPG's are often one and the same, so perhaps the similarities resonate more in my field than most, but if you think you ever want to manage people, I'd recommend you try some raiding first.
I miss playing Warcraft, and I miss going to work from the night job for a bit of easy graft. I miss the guild in particular and I played with fantastic people from all wakes of life and nationalities. But I'll always remember, regardless of if I relapse or not, that I had the honour to encounter three genuine leaders, even if they don't know it yet.
Your teams are broken if your leaders aren't doing the leading and the troops aren't naturally rallying.
If you're going to take anything away from this post:
- Always know who your leaders are
- Let them lead
- Always know who your A team are
- Less QQ moar pew pew