BG Leadership

At the request of an Ogre…  Well, I don’t have time available right now to give full justice and outline what I’d like to on WoW and Leadership, so instead I’ll simply relate an example from this weekend.

Good leadership in a battleground is understanding that it is one large PuG, and that no one is better or ranked higher than anyone else.  In the real world, if you are dumped into the CEO position, you instantly have what is called “Positional Power”.  You have authority that is derived from your position, and that is all.  Over time you can earn “Personal Power” (as people learn to trust you from your good leadership) or “Informational Power” (as people learn you actually do know what you’re talking about).  But in a WoW battleground?  No, Raid Leader does not mean you have positional power.  It also certainly does not mean you have personal or informational either.  The only power you have, is a different colored Raid text.  Does that mean that we’re all thrown in a BG with no leadership and are doomed to lose because of it?  No!  It just means that the people who want to be a RL in a BG just need to be smart about it, and treat it like a PuG – not like they’ve just been made CEO.

Thus you can understand why my jaw drops nearly every time I’m in one at the sheer audacity and idiocy of the people who think they’re God because they are RL.  If the one from this weekend had some understanding of the above, he wouldn’t have been using RW every 10 seconds ordering (yes, ordering, not: suggesting, pointing out, helping, hinting, aiding, etc.) everyone in what to do.  But if that wasn’t bad enough, what made me laugh out loud…

So we only have ~9 min left before we lose (aka we were attacking).  I’m coming up to one of the towers, on my way to the main door (pretty obvious what needed to be done with “/rw the center is open!” “/rw quit going for the towers” “/rw no one should be doing this” “/rw no one should do that” and so on.  Or the big gaping hole through the front…).  So this RL is yelling at a specific guy to not hit a tower.  Since I was going by the almost dead tower on my way to the center, I figured I’d lob a few shots at it.  I do, and it crumbles, and I see the guy he’s yelling at was also hitting that tower.  And right in front of him?  The RL.  Just standing there pacing back and forth in a fury at the guy.

Why does that annoy me?  He’s just an RL, and has already annoyed everyone with his constant RW.  And now I learn that he isn’t even contributing anything, not even 2 dps, to the BG.  He’s literally just trying to lord his power (of which he doesn’t realize he has none) over other people.  Good leadership?  I think not!

Even at the beginning, he had the right idea but wrong execution.  Rather than pointing out or ‘reminding’ people that once you can make a siege vehicle, you can make one, then hop out of it, and make a new one – thus enabling someone else (who isn’t able to yet) to hop in a siege vehicle.  Rather useful tactic!  But people much prefer a “Hey, just a reminder – if you can make a catapult, please don’t forget you can hop out of it and go make a new one so we have more catapults out there”.  Ok, that’s a little long-winded for a BG, but you get the point.  Acting more like a Coach than a Boss, essentially.

And I know you wonder – did we win?  Yes, barely.  But I can tell you it was certainly not due to that idiot and his RW’s.  ¾ of the raid /ignored him, lol.