We just wanted to post a brief reminder for all of you who raid with us about the values that underpin our raid and all that we do together.  You are the best community on our server and it is no accident!  These are values that have resulted in success for over a decade now:

First and foremost, we value YOU, the people behind the toons. We don’t invite people based on their skill at the game or how much disposable time they have on their hands – we invite them based on their personality and character. We invite people for fun and friendship. You are the reason we prep food, watch strat videos, pore over logs and set aside time to organize and make the raid happen. We aren’t doing this for items which will be obsolete soon (19 weeks!) or for achievements. We storm the heights of the Citadel each week because we have fun tackling new challenges with you guys. The modern mechanics of Warcraft make it easier than ever to find people to play with but your officer team was unanimous in this one sentiment: beating Hellfire Citadel on Heroic means NOTHING to us if we can’t do it with OUR team. You guys are the reason we log in.

Secondly we value fun. As a community of adult professionals we’re pretty sure we speak for everyone when we say that no one logs in to WoW to take on a second job. We are all quite busy enough with our real careers and families, thank you. We log in to have fun. We want you to have fun too.

Third, we have no tolerance for drama. It’s just not worth it. Don’t be so emotionally invested in a game that it’s worth yelling at someone else over. This goes back to our first and foremost value: the people. Valuing other people often means putting their needs ahead of our own wants. If I consider you before I consider myself it’s harder to create drama or make waves. By serving each other we create a team that is greater than the sum of its parts. When we take that sort of attitude it’s harder for drama to take root. Believe the best about your teammates and when and if problems arise, let’s resolve those problems like adults.

Fourth we value forgiveness and we recognize that no one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes, even your fearless raid leaders. Part of growing as a team is recognizing our own humanity and the humanity of others and being willing to forgive and look past it. Assigning blame is not productive and it’s not an exercise we intend to engage in. We care more about solutions than who is at fault, and since we’re raiding with friends and not strangers we’re primarily concerned with maintaining healthy relationships with our friends.

Lastly we value excellence. We want to do better. We never want to settle for last week’s performance. We WILL analyze logs and we WILL comb through strats and break down what we did right and what we did wrong. We will debrief and talk shop and theorycraft because winning is fun and we want to win with friends – and yeah some of us love analyzing the little details and polishing up the performance to make it better. At the end of the day (or the end of the xpac? lol) what matters to us is that we had fun with our friends and we gave them our best. We hope you will be on that same page with us. When you jump into that portal on raid nights, bring your best game and preparation for your own sake and for the sake of your friends. It isn’t about comparing ourselves to others but rather comparing ourselves to the best possible performance that we can bring.

If these things sound familiar… well they should. This is who we are, and it’s who we’ve been from the start and those values are the things that inform all of our discussions.