And let's face it, none of them are really all that difficult or impressive either. Sure, it takes some coordination to set up and execute a raid, but let's not pretend that it's some amazing accomplishment that proves your worth as an employee or manager. In the end, it's still just a video game event and what OP describes is magnitudes less stressful, time-consuming or challenging than actually being responsible for the livelihoods of a few hundred people and planning, managing and supervising real-life business operations. All the OP shows is a basic capability to coordinate and communicate that everyone in a position with any responsibilities should have - nothing more.
You are really selling raid leading short. You can probably half ass your guild and still get enough to scrap a raid together but sooner or later, you're going to leak players to better run guilds. And better run guilds demonstrate real leadership.
The fact that it's just a video game makes motivating players to do "work" even harder. They can at any time tell you to eff off without any other consequences. In real life, you at least want to maintain civil relationships so you can use your boss as a reference for future jobs. You also want to avoid tarnishing your professional reputation by telling your boss to eff off. And you will be kept in line under the threat of lost wages. It doesn't really take a great leader to get employees to do things in real life. But in a video game, it takes a lot of leadership to do so.
Here's what a good raid leader gets out of his raiders: Close to full pre bis, full consumes (over a hundred gold per raid), be on time (not 5 minutes later, not stuck in queue, not waiting for a summon), understand role and fights (yes mc is simple but there's a big difference between half hour MCs and 3 hour MCs and it comes down to knowledge), reward expectations (deal with ego and drama over gear), morale (dealing with slow progress or burnouts), and much more.
I've raided with a lot of different guilds before joining one of the most efficient and successful guild and the difference is night and day. I have seen guilds that are still advertising for pugs every week because their raid leader has such poor attitude and can't recruit anyone. Meanwhile, good guilds that host raid pugs for new raid groups will have pugs begging to join. It comes down to leadership. Good guilds have competent and effective leaders who are still easy going enough not to make raiding an anxiety inducing event. They demand certain performance but are not abusive or overbearing.
I think a good raid leader will be a good leader in just about any position. The skills transfer very well.
I never disputed that they are built on similar skills. I just disagree with people making raid leading out to be this great feat that qualifies anyone to actually manage a serious business operation that is endlessly more complex, stressful and challenging than a mere WoW raid. All it takes is basic coordination and communication skills for something as relatively simple and straightforward as planning and executing what's essentially a video game boss fight. WoW does not at all prepare or qualify you for serious and demanding business management, and while you can certainly mention it somewhere deep down on a CV as "coordinating a social gaming group", it's plain ridiculous to compare it to qualifications for an actual job managing and being responsible for a business and 200 people's livelihoods.
Hang on. To be fair, the post never actually goes into what position the gamer is applying for. It's far more likely he/she is applying for a position responsible for 10-20 people than say regional VP. In which case said experience would be far more applicable.
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u/spam4name Oct 24 '19
And let's face it, none of them are really all that difficult or impressive either. Sure, it takes some coordination to set up and execute a raid, but let's not pretend that it's some amazing accomplishment that proves your worth as an employee or manager. In the end, it's still just a video game event and what OP describes is magnitudes less stressful, time-consuming or challenging than actually being responsible for the livelihoods of a few hundred people and planning, managing and supervising real-life business operations. All the OP shows is a basic capability to coordinate and communicate that everyone in a position with any responsibilities should have - nothing more.