Duane: Metastasis

Duane returns to the scene this week which is sad because he has brought some drama with him. For my newer readers, he is not a real person, he is merely a character I have created to represent "my typical guildmate". It has been a while since I had to write about him as the my guild has been largely devoid of drama and even when there is some drama it isn't anything I felt the urge to write about. However over the past few months things have been slowly building to a point where I feel I need to vent the steam that is building before it boils over uncontrollably. 

I am certain many of you can relate to the events that I shall briefly describe here and if you can my heart goes out to you all and I hope that most of you, my dear readers, don't have any experience past, present or future. 

So lets set the scene a bit. Duane has been around the guild for a long while he is a good player and knows how to make himself popular with others. Sounds great, but Duane gets bored/distracted easily and often considers the rest of the guild to be slightly beneath him and at times I get the impression that he thinks we are holding him back. Duane likes to raid and as a raid leader he is hard to leave out of the raid because he is good. However, he has a cycle that has repeated itself on more than one occasion that in short is:

1. playing like a boss and being the perfect guild/raid member;
2. forming a clique;
3. becoming bored/disillusioned;
4. causing drama upsetting one (or more) players who may be part of the clique or not;
5. disappearing from the game for a short break which ends up being months;
6. returning as if nothing had ever happened;

Duane is currently in the early stages of step 4 and I am in a position of knowing what is about to happen and being powerless to stop it as if I do the clique that has evolved will see me as the bad guy which will upset the balance of the guild's raid and PvP teams.

This is not only affecting my game enjoyment but also that of a few others that know fully of Duane's past. I know something needs to be done I just don't know what the best course of action is to take.