Regarding Roulette

I never thought I'd be writing this but here we are.

I joined Roulette back when it was Internet Dragon Slayers in Uldir. I had played WoW on and off for years but never had stepped foot into anything past LFR until I joined this guild. I remember getting interviewed by Lit and being super nervous about raiding Mythic as it was something I thought was above my ability. I remember my stupid confidence and telling Lit that if he gave me a shot I would become the best DPS in his guild, and he believed me and tried me out. I put in a lot of work, and by the time Battle of Dazar'alor had ended I would in fact have considered myself one of the guilds best DPS.

When we were struggling to clear bosses in Uldir, Lit and I talked about turning the guild into something more. He had a vision for the guild and was so fervently passionate about his aspirations and the guild succeeding that I could do nothing but buy in to his crazy dream. Sure enough, we improved immensely in BoD, and achieved what we wanted in EP by getting Hall of Fame and server first on Sargeras. Things were only looking up, and we had our sights set on crushing it in 8.3 as well.

Unfortunately, while giving his all to Roulette, Lit neglected a lot of his personal life and had to step away from the game. To be a hundred percent transparent, myself and the other officers sort of gave Lit an ultimatum in regards to him as a leader — the week leading up to Mythic, Lit was missing raid and being much less responsive as usual in o-chat, and the officers at the time (myself, Bunny, Palf, and Jinnxy) thought that we were more fit to lead the guild than him considering his current situation. We talked to some players within Roulette at the time, and we were ready to remake the guild had Lit not handed me the reins. Lit had warned me that one of the few issues he had with me was that I didn't look at the bigger picture sometimes, and unfortunately he was right.

Our downwards trend in progression this tier is the result of an amalgamation of unfortunate events lining up. We had a major change in leadership days before the tier started, we changed our schedule and were raiding more often on back to back to back days, we had weak preparation in regards to strategy, and we had a general lull in performance from a lot of players who were reliable — whether it was just jitters from the start of a new tier, or trying to live up to the hype that was surrounding us, we simply fell flat.

With our progression well behind the curve of where we had anticipated, there was some pretty obvious animosity stirring within the raid team. While we all love each other and enjoyed playing with one another, we simply were not clicking when it came to raid. It seemed that it was truly just a combination of us as leaders under preparing for fights and as well as the raiders not preparing themselves or referencing the stuff that we did prepare for. Not to try and pin blame on our performance on any specific group, but there was a clear disconnect between the group of players preparing and giving their all to raid and the people who just showed up and were content with whatever happened.

Palf no longer enjoyed the raid as he felt that we were no longer up to par with what he wanted progression wise, which is completely understandable. Palf remaining in the guild at all was a stretch as we had to adjust our raid times for him to be even able to play here, but he did say that he felt immensely appreciated when everybody quickly banded together and got the new times to work so he could stay. At the end of the day, we're all paying $15 a month to play the game, and if he wants to go raid in a better progressed guild then I have no hard feelings towards him. He gave us a shot to be the guild he wanted us to be and to be quite honest we failed at that.

Bunny was reached out to by Imperative for sometime now, and raiding at the high end is something he is clearly passionate and excited about. Seeing things begin to crumble around him he took the offer, and I don't have any animosity towards him for that either, for the same reason as Palf — they are both excellent players who put in a ton of work on themselves and they deserve to be rewarded for it.

When all is said and done, us taking over the guild in place of Lit was simply delaying the inevitable. The guild itself relied on Lit way too much during his time here, and us trying to wean the guild off that reliance happened too abruptly for people to be playing at the same level they had before. We thought that people would be more self reliant than we were, and us under preparing with that in mind resulted in our two shitty raid weeks. Could we have created more resources and scheduled guild meetings to go over strat and get everybody on the same page? Yeah, we could've, and in hindsight we should've, but we were also banking on all of our players coming into the tier prepped and amped to go, and if never really felt like that.

We've hemorrhaged a lot of important players, and it's come to the point where it's all on me and Dusty to decide whether or not we're up to the task of scraping together what's left and keep Roulette afloat for the remainder of the tier. We've deliberated and just don't think that we're up to the task, which truly hurts to say considering where this guild was where I joined it to where it was at the end of EP, but I'm no longer getting the satisfaction I use to out of raiding here because of our progress. I told Lit that as long as Roulette felt like home and I enjoyed playing here that I'd be apart of it, and while I love the people here we just aren't making the strides that many of us hoped that we would.

To the people that have been with me since Uldir, I have an immense appreciation for you, your loyalty to our guild, and the experiences that we went through that molded me into the player I have become.

To the people who joined us in EP and helped us achieve server first, thank you for giving your all every raid night and helping Lit and I achieve the goals we set out for the guild so long ago.

To those of you who just joined us recently, thank you for buying into our hype and being apart of our team. I'm extremely disappointed that I wasn't better able to manage things in my short stint as GM and that it's led to our ending so abruptly. If we took you in as a trial it's because we thought you were top 100 world capable, so please venture to the greenest pastures you can find.

To Lit, while you were strongarmed into doing it, thank you for giving me the opportunity to lead this guild. It is clear that I am not cut out for it and greatly understated the things that you did to get us to where we are, and I'm immensely disappointed in myself for letting things turn out the way they have. I understand if you are unable to forgive me for all of this.

For myself, I am not done with WoW, but I've learned that I'm not a leader. While I trust my own judgement and feel like I'm a responsible and reliable person, I crumble when I have no one above myself to answer to. I always thought that I knew better and felt like I could lead this guild myself, but this has all just been one costly and painful learning experience. I'm planning on joining some other guild, swapping back to DPS, focusing on myself and just raiding. I will always be around if people want to chat, ask questions about this, or just shoot the shit. I have an immense love for everyone in this guild, so please don't be a stranger.

I'm sorry that I've been a bad GM. I'm sorry things did not turn out the way that I always said they would have. I'm sorry that we never achieved the things that we were aspiring to achieve. Ultimately, these problems stem from the top, and I've done a terrible job committing myself to Roulette and it's wellbeing.

As of now, Roulette is done raiding. When the time comes I will probably just pass lead back to one of Lit's alts. It's his guild after all. If you were planning on sticking it out, I appreciate your loyalty, but I think that we all deserve better than this.

I'm sorry for everything. Best of luck to those of you who took the time to read this.

—Mcadams