Open Raid and the saga of holyxpala

Since the introduction of cross-realm raiding, I have made a large amount of use of Open Raid. It’s a great site and I love the system. In fact yesterday I had a prolonged conversation with a Blizzard GM about how great it was. I would like to point out I am a MASSIVE fan of the service and look forward to carrying on as a regular user in Mists and beyond. This post is about a USER of the system, not the system itself. My only comments about the system is that I would like to see some consistency in discipline and how members who behave badly are dealt with, which I reference at the end of the blog post.

Since kick off I have run:

4 x Ulduar 25 man

2 x Firelands 25 man

2 x ICC 25 man

1 x ALL TBC & Vanilla Raids

In the works I also have a Throne of the Four Winds normal achievements run and 2 more Ulduar 25s in the making. I run raids either every week or every other week (dependent on circumstances) on a Friday night and plan on continuing to do so until Mists. Once Mists releases, I’ll be having a month off, but by the end of October I want to be starting off again, kicking off with Tier 11 heroics.

Running these raids is challenging. I do very little DPS or healing because I’m herding cats. Beforehand, I’m checking open raid almost hourly to check sign ups and view achievements and player information and progress. I work on spreadsheets which allow me to amalgamate the majority vote for achievements (I work by the method of – what the majority needs will get done). I make Mumble compulsory, so once invites are done I ensure everyone is on Mumble. I take note of those who are no shows and manage my reserve list. I manage who has received a rare mount in the past 4 weeks (to ensure fairness, I make sure people who get a rare mount are excluded from rolling on any others that should drop for a period of 4 weeks) and ensure that people aren’t needing on BoEs, taking patterns they don’t have a profession for or just generally being a dick.

I have a little spiel I ramble out when everyone is on Mumble. I ask for respect to all other people, ask that if people have an issue they inform me in WHISPER, rather than blasting other members in raid chat or on voice chat. I keep people informed that we are an 18+ raid and to expect bad language!, and bad jokes. However I will not accept any racism or racist jokes, or the usage of the word “rape” in my raid as a gaming term. I welcome chat and conversation and ask people to get involved. Because my old content raids are there for enjoyment, they are there for people to have fun and enjoy themselves. And you know, on the whole, people do.

This is me, on Open Raid:

Sitting at 80% friendly so far, with 455 plus votes. I think this means I’m doing pretty well. I realise this is nothing compared to the people who are half way to exalted, but seeing a I’m actually, it seems, comparably quite a LIGHT user of the system, I’m doing pretty well. Yes I am blowing my own trumpet, but it has relevance.

So. Here are the comments that I’ve received so far on Open Raid (in reverse chronological order). Now you can probably ignore if you want to be objective anything coming from Grokknar, Demeternoth & Gromble because they are all close friends of mine. Some of the others have, through attendance at raids, become friends:

Now I am genuinely proud of these. I work my BUTT off to ensure that people enjoy their raids with me – I want them to. They aren’t about getting the most bosses down or kicking the most ass, they are about HAVING FUN. And fun is had. By almost all.

Open Raid’s policy on comments

Now you can see in that list that there are three hidden comments which have been downvoted by other people that have seen my profile.

The first, from Vexy:

This amusingly came shortly after my raid evaluation, which included the following;

One presumes it took him a month to reply because he didn’t check his profile. Regardless.

The next:

And my response:

As of yet….no response.

I think that one can safely be ignored.

So, Open Raid’s comment policy. Requests friendly and constructive. Now…let’s completely disregard Shirvan and look at Vexy.

My comment on his profile page was not friendly, but neither was it mean, or cruel, or offensive. I simply stated facts. He did need on several BoEs despite it being in the rules not to. He did /spit on players repeatedly. And I wouldn’t invite him again. The whole point of a comments and reputation such as this is surely to inform others. Inform others of quality players, and inform them of poor players. When I fill in the full evaluation after a raid, which I always do, I always leave a comment, not just a vote. Because I believe these things only have relevance if we are open and clear. There is no need to be discourteous but there is a need to be honest.

If we just pretend no bad eggs exist in the bunch, then the rating system is pointless because there’s never any reasoning behind anything. We have to provide reasoning and evidence. There must always be evidence to back up claims. This is why I have thousands of screenshots. Because you should always keep evidence.

His comment on my page however – well for a start it was quickly downvoted into oblivion by other visiters, but what this does is give me a negative *undeserved* reputation. Him stating that I am a “bad leadr” is not constructive. It is not stating facts. He is tarnishing my reputation. However, I let it slide cos…well, I’m lazy.

Then, holyxpala entered the ring.

Last week, I ran an ICC 25. I stated beforehand, as I always do, which parts of the legendary would be reserved and which wouldn’t. I confirmed the roster. I did everyone’s achievements, and I uploaded the spreadsheet for ALL to see which stated EXACTLY which achievements we would be going for – this did NOT include Lich King heroic (as the majority of people needed Neck Deep in Vile & I’ve Been Waiting a Long Time For This, so they took priority). This was also stated at the start of the raid.

Before the Marrowgar pull, this chap was already starting to grate on me slightly. He was spamming me with whispers, spamming me with WHY NOT LK HEROIC, WHY NOT. I explained on mumble, and in chat, that we would be doing LK normal, for the achievements. I then said to him that he had every right to leave before we pulled Marrowgar to be left unsaved to the instance and able to carry on. There was no response.

Throughout the rest of the raid (which took 2 and a half hours) he whinged about the jokes people were making on Mumble (which mostly consisted of “the worst possible jokes you can think of relating to plays on words of warcraft terms EVER”), he whinged about the speed of our clear, he whinged about the time of our break, he made offensive remarks about people being “old”, and he had some dodgy and offensive macros for ressing or particular spells – “come alive again you wanker” being one of them. He also paid very little attention and was…well, as much of a nuisance as someone can be. I got whispers off at least 7 or 8 individuals who aren’t in my guild about his behaviour, and then guild chat (usually 8-10 members of the raids come from Jane Doe, my guild, itself) was abuzz with about what a pain he was being.

So. The raid ended, despite the whinging from holyxpala, and evaluation time came round. Now, I have a friend. He is…not known for mincing his words, and he also had no idea (having never used Open Raid before) that comments you made on a page appeared publically. So, he may have given holyxpala a rating and MAY (ie did) call holyxpala a (changed font colour – highlight over only if you don’t mind STRONG expletives) “whinging shitcunt. Do not take anywhere”. Now…yes. This does break the Open Raid policy of being friendly or constructive. However it is certainly information.

My own comment to holyxpala was as follows:

All true. His attitude was poor, he was particularly rude, and I wouldn’t invite him again.

What he did then was get defensive, swapping between his own characters (which are all linked, so I think although his intent was to make it seem like different people were commenting, he just made himself look a little silly:

(as a reminder again, these are in reverse order – newest at the top, so start at the bottom)

I’m a particular fan of the way he keeps on adding extra comments to…add weight to his cause. And the last one just strikes me as “petulent child strikes back” – “and don’t worry I don’t even wanna join your lame humourless raids”.

Anyway. Other members of the raid (COMPLETELY uninitiated by me, may I add, commented on his page;

By this point, he’s just digging himself such a big hole.

So at this point, he reports Gnoble – or someone does. Who receives an email from Open Raid, which I can’t remember word for word, except it included a few clauses

- You wouldn’t speak to a stranger in the street using that language

- You must never comment on a raid page that person has joined

- You must never comment on a raid page that person has organised

- You must never comment on that person’s profile

all of which carried the penalty of profile deletion.

Now…I understand what Gnoble did was crass and unnecessary but I feel the above is completely over the top. Really, totally over the top.

Firstly – the statement about speaking to a stranger in the street that way. This chap wasn’t a stranger. This dude was a total pain in the behind who upset several people and caused problems for several others. To be honest if someone was that much of a dick to me in real life for two and a half hours, I probably would be ready to throw a string of expletives at him.

So, I decided to put my own report in, which said:

Hi There,
I’d like to report this member for a variety of issues.
1) Tarnishing my reputation on Open Raid. As you can see, I run quite a few raids. I also have a pretty much 100% happy raiding base. In my entire Open Raid history, I have had 2 justified negative comments on my page. The first was a response to my negative comment on Vexy the death knight, as I’d mentioned him needing on BoEs, /spitting on raid members and whatnot. His negative comment appeared after this. The second was unjustified and stated “did not turn up for raid” – when the person was not selected or at any point added to my real ID. The third came from this person. This person came to my raid on his paladin last Friday. He was abusive to me in whispers. He spammed me all night with questions which were answered several times on Mumble. He was abusive to other raid members. He had incredibly offensive macros and emotes set up. He complained about the raid throughout. When I stated at the start of the raid we would be doing Lich King normal, not heroic, I gave him the choice to leave. He CHOSE to stay. There would have been no repercussions to him leaving and I never said there would be any. 
2) Another raider who attended the raid then made an off the cuff remark on his profile page, which he was then chastised for with a ridiculous over reaction about how he must never comment on this user’s presence on OR ever again. AND most amusingly how he would surely “never communicate with a stranger this way” – now this paladin was not a stranger. This paladin was, quite frankly, a pain in the behind for a three hour raid. He wasn’t a stranger. I seriously recommend you think about rewording your emails. Whereas a warning was justified, he probably shouldn’t have used the coarse language, the email is an over reaction.
3) This paladin then used his other character (presumably to avoid detection) to comment on the other raider’s page, as well as on my own page.
He is tarnishing MY reputation as a raid leader and tarnishing the reputations of my raids with such comments as “well I don’t want to come to your lame humourless raids anyway” (please see Gnoble’s page for these comments).
I would like to see him suffer the same repercussions as Gnoble and have his comments about my raids completely removed from my page and from Gnoble’s page as they bear exactly the same weight as Gnoble’s original comment.
I will be sending this in PM to moderators if I do not receive a response or do not see adequate action being taken as I believe action is warranted.
Many thanks
Elsen

Using the inbuilt “report a user” function I sent this off yesterday.

This user is tarnishing MY reputation as an open raid user and raid leader. This is inappropriate. If there is a warning given to someone for swearing, I believe that a warning, if not a ban, should be put in place for this member due to his behaviour.

Now at the end of the day, I understand he’s probably just a kid, and that he may not know what he’s saying, or care. And I know that my report is a gross over reaction as well, because really at the end of the day, it’s a load of bloody pixels and…it doesn’t really matter.

But what I would like to see is some repercussions. If this is a website that is supposed to be community monitored, then it needs to be done so adequately. I haven’t, as of yet, received a response from Open Raid to my report. I will be waiting for one and will re send it if I don’t get one. I am happy with NOBODY being disciplined for negative words or negative reactions, or EVERYONE. It cannot be one rule for one and one rule for another.

Anyway. That’s as things lie at the moment. Once Mists drops I look forward to making use of the system again to run T11, T12 and T13 raids, as well as the LK and earlier content. I really do think it’s a great system and the people who thought of it are doing a fantastic job in joining up the World of Warcraft community and deserve a large round of applause for this.

I’d be interested to see what other people think about Open Raid, how they’ve found it or interacted with it, and how they’ve dealt with problem players or other issues.

Many thanks

Elsen