Thursday, May 17, 2007

Rotting Rat Stink

Dealing with behavior problems in others is such a daunting task. It's complicated, requires many intricate steps, involves attention to detail and un-phased dedication to a goal, and there is so much that can potentially go wrong in the process. Every workday, I show up as early as 6:00 a.m., put together a behavior profile for each individual, examine their respective environments, analyze potential stimuli for reinforcing potential, classify those reinforcers, identify competing behaviors, implement them, plan for the long term, and hope to all end that I did things right the first time so that I wouldn't have to go through each one of those steps all over again. When that happens, it's complete torture. Kinda reminds me of a morning last week when I stepped into my garage and inhaled the most putrid, almost visible odor. I recognized the smell of a rotting rat immediately, but the odor completely filled the room, so I had no idea where it was coming from. Searching through the olfactory mess in search of the source of the problem... was the problem... so yeah, they're kinda similar that way.

The past few weeks of WoW have been eerily similar as well. In Prom Kings, we've had to deal with a level of inexplicable behavior comparable to Alex's worst (you know, rotting rat stink), loot-whoring from the mis-judged, general hate thrown in our direction, harassment of our GM, attendance and recruitment issues, and a complete redesign of some of our member's assignments. Such experiences have broken guilds apart, but our practices and ideals kept us intact. There's been lots of analyzing, re-analyzing, working, re-working, doing, re-doing, and finally, this week, solving.

Together with Halcyon, we've answered, at least for the moment, our attendance and recruitment problems. Co-op, we have enough for 25-man content and recently downed the High King (I totally stole his crown, btw) -- not a big deal, but it's a step in the right direction in that we got to see each other play and measured our group chemistry well. I was worried at one point, since the raid did start off slow, but once we settled into our respective roles and got used to each other's habits, we started to roll. DPS was hawt. Healing was hawt. And Kergen, well, he was just a star. Now, if only he can figure out how to enable comments on his blog. ;)

This weekend will see both of our guilds attempting Gruul for the first time as a unit. And now that we're in-tune, I'm sure that it'll go just as well as it did with the King if not better. Should be fun.

So yeah, we've put a lot of work in the past few weeks, getting things back in order and moving along nicely. We've had our hiccups and felt like we've had to start all over again, but even so and amidst the hate and the rumors that our guild no longer exists, we're here, we're pressing forward, and we're gonna have a hell of a time.

We totally found the rat, and we're not scared of it's stink anymore. After all, we've got potpourri, biatches. =)

See you at the top.

6 comments:

Torin Ceri said...

the only thing i'd be a bit cautious of when co-running an endgame run like that is the whole loot issue, because it will become an issue. that happened to me before on my old server, that, and issues of which guild's MT was going to get the T1 and T2 tank drops...etc...

in the end it was too much and the guild(s) disbanded, but maybe PK can overcome that, just saying what happened to me tho.

Jagoex said...

Yeah, the loot issue has me on edge as well, but once the patch comes out and two T4 tokens drop -- it'll make the potential issues much easier to stomach.

Zy said...

" I am in your therapy rewiring your thought process" -Zyphre

You forgot to put that in there nub.


On a side note, how the hell do you reason with someone that has PTSD?

Jagoex said...

Yo Zy. How do you reason with someone with PTSD? Gimme more pls.

Don't worry, I'll bill you later.

Zy said...

I have to deal with a few people that have been diagnosed with post traumatic stress. This one guy in particular is an ex-ranger.

He is constantly creating "facts" from his assumptions.
Insisting that he told people things he never even hinted at.
Blaming people for things they aren't even involved with.

3-2-1 go jago!

Jagoex said...

Hmm. Well just with those basics, it seems that either 1) the two issues are unrelated or 2) his PTSD is the basis for his creating of facts so that he does not have to experience a new stressful event, no matter how minor it may be.

How do you deal with that person? Well, from a simple behavior mod. perspective, you do whatever you can to keep from reinforcing that behavior. I don't know the context of how it's taking place, so I can't get specific, but just make sure he doesn't receive any rewards for acting that way, and the behavior should eventually extinguish. Now, the problem is making sure he's not receiving reinforcement for that behavior elsewhere... because if he is, it will not go away with just your efforts.