Chaos

The word of today is chaos! Chaos or entropy is responsible for change; and therein lies the problem as change can lead to uncertainty and doubt. However, change isn't always as dark and sinister as people fear it to be. Within change, there lies a certain unequivocal brilliance which has the potential for amelioration.

If I had to describe today's raid with one word, I believe that chaos would most certainly fit. We began our raid with the undoubtedly most chaotic encounter in the game currently which definitely lead to some major stress for some of our guild members. The Faction Champions fight in Trial of the Crusader (heroic version) is somewhat based upon a PvP experience in that you're fighting various classes that mimic the roles that are normally found in an arena team. This fight demands an intense focus on spacial and situational awareness in that you must be able to pick up and run away at a moment's notice (in order to elude death) and that you may be expected to crowd control a certain NPC that is running around frantically attacking a random person every few seconds.

This type of situation most always leads to high stress as does its in-game counterpart, arena PvP. I find that arena PvP can make people, who are normally highly cohesive and affable toward each other, into bickering and insulting jerks. Frustration (occurs in a situation in which the pursuit of goals is thwarted) plays a key role in the degradation of group cohesiveness because the sheer failure rate within PvP is high; a typical good arena team has a win to lose ratio of approximately 5:4. Pressure is another key factor leading to dissent and erosion of cohesion in groups; when someone is expected to behave in a certain way or perform a particular function and that task is unmet, pressure is the immediate outcome. Conflict tends to arise when frustration and pressure are abundant. It is usually the stress response which causes the conflict between team members as common stress responses elicit maladaptive coping behavior responses that include lashing out, blaming others, and learned helplessness (passive behavior produced by exposure to unavoidable aversive events). However, I find that stress acts as a great motivator in that it will force a person to attempt to do anything possible to alleviate the build up of pressure. Although stress is excellent at accomplishing a difficult goal, its continual presence may also be responsible for burnout; burnout (emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and lowered self-efficacy) occurs when stress is chronic. Burnout is terrible for a guild as it often leads to absenteeism and reduced performance. Therefore, it is important to ensure that periods of stress are broken up by interjections of unbridled fun and light-heartedness otherwise the immense buildup of stress would undoubtedly foster burnout of the highest degree.

The culmination of this chaotic raid night was in one of our highly valuable officers relieving his position. I believe that this happened due to his health as leading the raids would often leave him raging to an apex of seething physiological responses which elicit heart obliteration. This news is quite upsetting as this particular officer is a favorite of mine and very well respected; his attention to detail, superb raid awareness, knowledge, and brilliant ability are not matched by anyone else in the guild.