The Mystery Of The GM Time Suck

For those of you following along at home, remember Alex and I are co-GM’s of the guild The Snark Side. And while she held the official GM title on one of her toons, she stealth-promoted me when I wasn’t looking. ARGH! I’ve never been a real GM before so I flail a little.

Now, here’s how it works at Snark Side. We have 2 co-tyrants, no officers, no private officer chat, none of that. People volunteer to take on specific jobs, and they can HAVE em. Right now I do all the website crap and Alex is in charge of recruitment. Iyeri does rostering, Lono and/or Wolfsong lead the actual raids. During the raid, Alex or another person with a second monitor does loot mastering. Alex has volunteered to do banking but if that proves to be a large task, Kris has offered to step up.

As you can see, besides the website (which doesn’t take much time once it was all set up to my liking), I do not have a single other specified job. Despite not knowing what the fuck I actually do, I spend an inordinate amount of time doing it. This is kind of baffling for me, since while I cannot pinpoint the “SRS BZNS GM TASKS” I am constantly doing STUFF associated with the guild.

Do the rest of you GM’s out there feel like your time just GOES?

Actually, I think my guild(s) (1 on both sides) has used /officer chat 1x, and otherwise I’ve spent ~30 minutes after being promoted to GM, mainly making sure guild bank was set up right and helping the GM on rep side set permissions correctly on his side (2 guilds, 2 gm’s). Otherwise I’ve actually spent more time on the rep side running HM’s on my healer than the imp side on any of my toons. Of course, our members are in both guilds and 1/2 don’t have 50’s yet. Maybe throw another hour for posting stickies on forums with good reads for folks, class/balance/guide wise. The person who promoted me is the person who registered our voice chat and has admin rights to it, so that’s out. Other than that, what could be termed GM work is the same stuff I’ve done since tor launched and well prior to my promotion. Namely, trying to get folks to run flashpoints (cause they’re fun right?), regardless of level, and entering tell hell while trying to organize diff groups for dailies and whatnot on both sides. Again, I’m not a usual case since my guild is filled with a majority of folks who are casual and even us “hard core” folks are easy going. Not much tell hell since the “hey I wanna do stuff or talk about something” folks are usually in voice. All in all, my guild is basically self regulating, with it really being “lead” by several long term and still active members who, for the most part, agree on all the important stuff, and don’t stress about the disagreements. We won’t beat Nightmare anything as a guild for months, if ever, but we have enough connections that those of us who want to do hard modes, have been doing them with each other and allied guilds for months. Those that don’t still get to enjoy my bad jokes in guild chat and I get to talk to people I consider friends.

I would like something like GW1’s “related guilds” feature. I don’t know what they call it, but you can “join” multiple guilds and have access to their guild chats. Seriously, I need to say “har har har” in more places than I’m currently allowed. Until then, I’ll say it in their voice chats when running HM’s and Ops.

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The Mystery Of The GM Time Suck — 11 Comments

Targeter on April 26, 2012 at 9:25 am said:

God YES. As GM of Scum and Villainy, I spend an inordinate amount of time doing abso-fucking-lutely nothing important, yet I’m busy all the time. I haven’t leveled my poor Bounty Hunter in two months (still at 28), my Sith Warrior is stuck at 46, and by the great balls of the Sky-Hutt, I haven’t seen my Republic toons in weeks.

Here’s where your time goes.

N’Jessi has logged on.
[Guild][Lono]: hey n’jessi got some time?
[Guild][Wolfsong]: we need a fourth for an HM
[Guild][N’jessi]: i guess, one second
[Guild][Plebe]: can i get promoted? i need to see gbank stuff
[Guild][Pvpmastah]: hey, when was the ranked warzone coming out, boss? i’m bord
[Guild][Newguy]: hey GM do you know how to complete this heroic on Dromund Kaas?
[Guild][Bitteroldman]: Convince me to stay in TOR or else I’m leaving and am going to cause a huge scene in gchat!
[Guild][Srsbsns]: hey we need to have a private chat about the raid teams; i clearly know everything there is to know about MMOs and raiding and could probably run this guild better than you so i’m going to tell you all about it in whispers while you try to do your hardmode
[Guild][N’jessi]: FUUUUUUUU
N’jessi has logged off.

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- Njessi on April 26, 2012 at 9:30 am said:
  
  Thankfully nobody in snarkside is as annoying as in the above example! But it is always SOMETHING, even if NOBODY has asked me anything in whispers or guild chat.
  
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lonomonkey on April 26, 2012 at 9:36 am said:

You got it all wrong Targeter, Njessi is way more neurotic than that, she actually seeks out stuff to do on her own. It’s pretty impressive.

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- Iyeri on April 26, 2012 at 10:34 am said:
  
  Seconded! Feel free to chill, between the two of us Lono and I spend a ton of time on raid prep and stuff too… We got you covered, at least on this end.
  
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Raffles on April 26, 2012 at 10:27 am said:

Yeah, I run a medium sized guild (150+)on an EU server and logging on is either pretty much like the above example or, more annoyingly, a slew of silence as (I imagine in my tiny mind) hushed reverence of the GM logging on. …But it’s more likely they just don’t really care. Ego, thou art a fragile thing.

I do sometimes wonder if guildies wait until you’re doing grouped content before they start whispering you, or why officers start an in-depth chat in /O when you’re in space combat about raid/ops attendance.

The timesink of running a guild is a curious thing, I find its a mix of “arg! there’s only one of me, leave me alone” and “oh gosh, I hope I don’t annoy someone/make them leave/give us a bad reputation/make bad decisions etc”

Ah, the loneliness of leadership 🙂

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- Targeter on April 26, 2012 at 11:02 am said:
  
  Totally concur … it’s the rush of unlimited power shackled by the crushing insecurity that cripples us!
  
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Alex on April 26, 2012 at 10:42 am said:

I felt it more in my time as GM (whether I had co-GMs or not) in WoW. Here, I lean on you a lot and have really spent some time just coasting, except when I poke at recruitment.

I think that it’s the talking with people that will really get you. Even when none of it is dramatic or difficult, it’s easy to feel like you always have to be On and Present and Involved. It’s the main reason I have vacation toons so I can play and not have to talk to anyone about anything.

My two cents? Just take an evening to immerse yourself in your characters without paying attention to gchat – unless we’re talking about fucking rakghouls – at all. It’s a nice vacation from the feeling of Doing Important Stuff.

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Captain Dorja on April 26, 2012 at 3:24 pm said:

It’s got to be the crafting. What she left out of that post is that Njessi and her flock of minions (termed idiots) are constantly running around the galaxy underworld trading, synthweaving, scavenging, slicing, building stuff, REing stuff, looking at stuff to build, looking at stuff to RE, tossing in a few gifts to the numerous teams of minions/idiots who are marauding across space on various quests to build ALL OF THE THINGS!

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- Captain Dorja on April 26, 2012 at 3:25 pm said:
  
  *She’s like the self appointed armory officer 😛 There we go. That was the short version using the term I couldn’t think of.
  
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mooftak on April 26, 2012 at 6:38 pm said:

Actually, I think my guild(s) (1 on both sides) has used /officer chat 1x, and otherwise I’ve spent ~30 minutes after being promoted to GM, mainly making sure guild bank was set up right and helping the GM on rep side set permissions correctly on his side (2 guilds, 2 gm’s). Otherwise I’ve actually spent more time on the rep side running HM’s on my healer than the imp side on any of my toons. Of course, our members are in both guilds and 1/2 don’t have 50’s yet. Maybe throw another hour for posting stickies on forums with good reads for folks, class/balance/guide wise. The person who promoted me is the person who registered our voice chat and has admin rights to it, so that’s out. Other than that, what could be termed GM work is the same stuff I’ve done since tor launched and well prior to my promotion. Namely, trying to get folks to run flashpoints (cause they’re fun right?), regardless of level, and entering tell hell while trying to organize diff groups for dailies and whatnot on both sides. Again, I’m not a usual case since my guild is filled with a majority of folks who are casual and even us “hard core” folks are easy going. Not much tell hell since the “hey I wanna do stuff or talk about something” folks are usually in voice. All in all, my guild is basically self regulating, with it really being “lead” by several long term and still active members who, for the most part, agree on all the important stuff, and don’t stress about the disagreements. We won’t beat Nightmare anything as a guild for months, if ever, but we have enough connections that those of us who want to do hard modes, have been doing them with each other and allied guilds for months. Those that don’t still get to enjoy my bad jokes in guild chat and I get to talk to people I consider friends.

I would like something like GW1’s “related guilds” feature. I don’t know what they call it, but you can “join” multiple guilds and have access to their guild chats. Seriously, I need to say “har har har” in more places than I’m currently allowed. Until then, I’ll say it in their voice chats when running HM’s and Ops.

Reply ↓

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The Mystery Of The GM Time Suck — 11 Comments

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