My Hobby, Group Succession

Group Succession
I am a part of an online group as a hobby. I meet with this group three days out of the week, and twice on Wednesdays. Within the group that I am associated, there are important elements such as leadership and leading roles as assists. The group also includes an agenda and organization to carry out the tasks. Lastly, in order to achieve our goals and follow the agenda, the leaders assign roles to each member of the group.
The group I am involved with is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game or an MMORPG. World of Warcraft is an MMORPG and has been a hobby of mine for nearly three years. Within the game, I am a part of a causal raiding guild called Armageddon. As a role of the guild, we form into several different smaller groups, and we raid certain enemies and their leaders or bosses. The guild consists of nearly 200 members, and throughout the week, six groups of ten take part in raiding what is called raid instances. We also form a twenty five man raid on Wednesday nights. A raid instance is a zone inside the game that contains many trash mobs and bosses. Trash mobs are enemies that are not as threatening as bosses but demand prompt attention. The bosses are usually single “monsters” located at the end of a zone section or checkpoint. They require the raid to work on and apply tactics, performance, leadership, cooperation, focus, and communication. My raid group has three main leaders: the raid leader Holyish (Nav D), raid assistants Jolly (Paul) and me (Z), and our bank and potion supplier Dawndi (Tina).
Several roles exist in a single raid group. We have our general roles, our distinct roles and our underlined roles. The general roles include tanks, damage per second (DPS), and healers. A ten man raid will have two tanks, which are armor heavy members that focus on keeping the attention (agro, short for aggression) of the bad guys, and taking as much damage away from the rest of the group and onto themselves. The job of the DPS is to do as much damage to the mobs or the bosses as possible without pulling agro. In a ten man, five are dedicated as DPS, sometimes depending on the fight we have to conduct. The last three positions belong to healers, who focus on keeping everyone in the raid group alive, specifically the tanks.
There are distinct roles related to the general roles in a raid group. Each member in the raid group has a general role, but also at the same time, have class specifications. The tanks can be protection warriors, protection paladins, bear druids, and/or frost death knights. The DPS classes can be arms or fury warriors, ret paladins, cat or boomkin druids, blood and unholy death knights, rogues, mages, elemental or enhancement shamans, shadow priests, warlocks, and hunters. Healer classes consist of holy or discipline priests, holy paladins, restoration shamans, and restoration druids. Each class has its own special abilities that are specifically useful within a raid. For example, Warrior tanks are more attune to holding agro on one specific mob or boss whereas a paladin and death knight do well at holding agro on many mobs. Mages are the only DPS class that has the spell slow which slows the enemy considerably. Shadow priests are desired as mana batteries because their mere presence boosts the rejuvenation of the mana that it takes to cast any kind of magic. The raid desires to have shamans in the raid group because they have a certain spell that buffs the entire raid temporarily and enables them to cast or hit faster and harder.
Furthermore, some of the raid members have underlined roles that have little or nothing to do with their general or distinct role. These roles are leadership or specific assignments. In the Wednesday ten man and twenty five man raids, and the Thursday evening raid, Holyish acts as the raid leader. Jolly and I take on the raid assist roles and Dawndi acts primarily as the raid supplier in flasks and food. On Saturdays, I take on the role of raid leader, and Holyish and Jolly are my assistants.
As Holyish is the leader of the guild, he also acts as the primary raid leader. He is open to suggestions from his officers on leading the guild and what is best for the guild. He runs a democratic leadership within the guild and encourages communication, critical thinking, and action. In a raid, Holyish assigns the roles to each member of the group. He assigns two people to tank, five to dps, and three to heal. When it comes to certain boss fights, he may switch some roles to better improve the raid’s overall ability.
The goal of the raid adheres to a certain and necessary agenda. Upon entering a raid instance, the first step is to clear, or kill, all of the trash mobs. This is generally easy but sometimes a trash mob will require extra attention or focus, depending on its special abilities. The second goal is downing the bosses at the end of sections or at checkpoints. The third goal during a raid is the loot received from trash mobs and mainly the bosses. A single person, usually the raid leader, assumes the role of loot master. This person controls who in the raid gets what loot.
There have been times where conflict arose about loot and who got what. It is rare that loot conflicts arise in recent days; however, before we became a well oiled and organized machine, conflict arose all the time, particularly in our twenty five man raid. Basically, an item would drop from a boss that more than one person desired, but only one person could have. It was difficult for us officers to make things as fair as possible which led us to come up with the rules we now have concerning loot.
Gender differences in the groups are evident in that there are never any female raid leaders and rarely ever any female raid assistants. When it comes to boss encounters, women generally are not socially accepted to speak. Females are not forced into silence; however, it is rare for them to speak up unless they have a question.
Furthermore, Holyish encourages each member that is a part of any raid group to read about the boss fights expected to be encountered. He also suggests that we look the fights up on youtube.com so as to see them first hand. Each week, before the raid begins, the raid leader will go through and chose who will participate.
In conclusion, although World of Warcraft is an MMORPG and takes place online only, each guild and raid portrays important group concepts such as leadership, organization, agenda, roles, conflict, decision making, characteristics, and adjourning.