I’ve kind of turned my inability to find, and stay, in a guild into a sort of self-directed joke – well, it’s easier than getting depressed about it, which is the other alternative. And I am actually enjoying my whistle-stop-tour through a bunch of innocent guilds – it’s really rather educative, although in some ways probably slightly unfair on the guilds as I’m increasingly buying into the notion that I’m a person who doesn’t stay in guilds which means I’ll probably end up being a person who doesn’t stay in guilds. I’ve given up on nearly all of my ambitions – I don’t expect to kill the Lich King any time soon, but as long as I get a few decent raids under my belt, that’ll keep me going until Cataclysm.
I’ll just say in advance of this blog post, which is going to be a general musing on the theme of guilds, that I’m well aware the problem here is largely me. I do actually have more than 10 friends (outside Azeroth I mean, and yes I counted, and no one of them isn’t a murloc) so I can’t be so insanely fanatical and unreasonable that I’m incapable of forming human relationships. But, as a general rule, I do have extremely low tolerance for ignorance, stupidity, and prejudice – and an unfortunate sense of self-righteousness means that I associate shutting up with complicity with the aforementioned. Couple this with a lack of experience in working with others and a natural impatience with authority and I’m a fucking disaster.
I mention this because I just wanted to be clear that I haven’t considered the problem and come to the clearly erroneous conclusion that the issue is inherently with the guilds and not with me. Of course it’s generally easier to blame THE SYSTEM MAN THE SYSTEM than yourself but I do think guilds are not unproblematic in themselves. Moreover I think a lot of the issues with the way guilds work are so embedded in our perception of what a guild is, and should be, that they’re taken for granted as part of guild life. Possibly Cataclysm will change all this anyway but for the moment indulge me in the identification of some of these problems.
Transparency, Power & Authority
Most guilds I have encountered are heedlessly oligarchic: the guild is run by a cohort of the GM and his officers (who may, or may not, come across as an almost impenetrable clique) but often the question I find myself asking, when I watch the way power is wielded and authority imposed, is “why is that person an officer at all?” Again, not to get bogged down by argumentum ad dictionary, but I think it is easy to forget that an officer is one who holds an office. And although I’ve run into some guilds who have clearly demarcated roles for their officers, e.g a recruitment officer, a website officer, and so on, it is not entirely clear to me why the skills required to moderate the forum or be the ranged DPS lead are presumed transferable with the skills required to manage to day to day admin of the guild, or deal with a raid scheduling clash, introduce a new player to the guild or calm a personality dispute. And it all seems so deliberately opaque: rare has been the occasion on which a guildie has been promoted and I’ve thought to myself “Yes, I can see why that happened, I can see what you bring.” And obviously I’m just a guild member, I can’t be expected to understand the intricacies of guild process but there’s also an extent to which most guild hierarchies actually occlude their members from gaining insight into the power structures they support.
I’ve been meaning to blog about Big Crits for a while but actually it serves as an excellent example of this in practice: obviously the perspective of the viewer is at an even greater remove than the perspective of your average guildie but the power dynamics at play are honestly incomprehensible. Talking about Bit Crits is quite difficult because you keep having to remind yourself that these are real people and not fictional constructs it’s okay to diss, but, as is often the case with slightly badly put together reality TV, Chas and I are completely obsessed with a completely inconsequential detail. Specifically: The Mysterious Mystery Of Cancerboss, a peculiarly opaque character who is nevertheless apparently AN INCREDIBLE TANK AND AWESOME PERSON WHO IS TOTALLY SUITED FOR OFFICERSHIP OH YES, or so Stoneybaby – in the throes of a passionate bromance – assures us.
But since Cancerboss never speaks for himself, and the only occasions on which we hear him he’s (ineptly) haranguing the raid, and the guild members do occasionally makes “jokes” about what a dick he is, it is impossible to gain any real understanding of his value to the guild. Or to anyone, really. I remember Stoneybaby saying something to the effect that Cancerboss is the one who believes in you more than you believe in yourself – but since his way of showing this seems to be yelling that people suck, we remain unconvinced. I personally would not like Cancerboss to believe in me. I know this is a problem largely with the format – and Cancerboss is probably a perfectly average human being, albeit one with a really stupid name – but it is actually very revealing of the opacity of guild power structures and promotions. I mean, from the way it comes across, it does honestly seem like Stoneybaby woke up one morning and decided to promote Cancerboss, which leaves the viewer – proudly wearing their Furioso For President badge – genuinely bewildered. And I’ve never been in a guild where it seemed to work any more transparently. Guild members are expected to aspire to officership – as it’s really the only trajectory available to them for acknowledgement of value to the guild – but the mechanisms and the path, and the decision-making progress, are largely shrouded in mystery.
A story from a few guilds back: not long after a member was recently promoted to officer for undisclosed services to the guild, there was a bit of tension in guild chat over an “invitation only” raid. A couple of members were understandably angry, and as the only officer on-line the new officer was fielding the backlash. Well, I say fielding, in the middle of their perfectly justified and moderately expressed concerns, he said something like “Fuck it, I didn’t even put the thing on the calendar and now you’re all just going to rip me a new one” and logged off. And I remember thinking to myself: “wow, you handled that really really badly.” And I am no Master of Diplomacy.
I had my brief, unhappy fling with officership because I wanted to do work FOR the guild, and it seemed the only way to get a real say in the way the guild worked, but all it did was take me further from the guild as a whole, and inculcate me into the sort of power structures that make me uncomfortable. The thing is, I acknowledge the need for administration, organisation and leadership in a large, or extremely progression-orientated guild but in a small casual guild … I find it harder to swallow. And I increasingly wonder why so much guild business is hidden from members – partially, I’m sure, it’s because it’s tedious but since members are intelligent, aware, insightful human beings if there are problems chances are they will already have identified them. And obviously if you are a guild member you don’t want to have to worry about, say, recruiting more tanks, but if there’s a tank shortage you’ve probably noticed, and it would be reassuring, I think, to know that the tank issue has been spotted and is being handled. There is really no reason – as far as I can see – that guild business shouldn’t be open to all.
I know guilds work in different ways, and what works for one may not work for others, and that ’serious’ guilds benefit from a more militaristic approach, but I don’t like the fact the default structure as hardcoded into the game is often adopted without thought or question. I think my current guild functions as meritocratic despotism: the GL is all powerful, ruthless and merciless, as only a 16 year old could be. We all know exactly where we stand, which is very very carefully. And I suspect the system will function perfectly until I cross the line, and earn his ire, whereupon I’ll rant about its inherent unfairness. But currently I like it because he has no hesitation whatsoever is blasting idiots and timewasters out of the sky. And the other advantage of it is that the progression path is very clear: perform well, get what you want, it really is that simple. And bear in mind that I’ve come from a guild where I sat on the bench for a month, with no hope of ever getting off it short of murdering every other priest in the guild, and maybe not even then. Talk about dead man’s sandals of consecration.
And a further problem with the opaque power structures of a lot of guilds is the largely unavoidable consequence of perceived clique-iness. Whether it is conscious or not, the GM and the officers are literally a clique: a group of people that cannot be joined without an explicit invitation. They’re at the centre of guild life, they know more, they do more, and they work more closely with each other than they do with other people in the guild. Because guilds are structured like a workplace, with an integral promotion structure, progression through the hierarchy is the assumed trajectory for all members. People expect to get promoted as a result of being the guild, or doing things in the guild, but ultimately since there is no clear path up the hierarchy, and the workings of the hierarchy are closed to most guild members, there is actually no way for members to gain any recognition of their value to the guild. This wouldn’t be a problem if people did not expect to be recognised this way, but that is ultimately how guild structures are assumed to function.
An Impossible Balancing Act
The other thing that strikes me about guilds is that they’re functionally impossible to maintain. The ideal number of raiders for an individual is exactly 10, where one of the 10 is you. The ideal number of raiders for a 10-man team for a guild is 18. I’ve said this before. But what I didn’t say is that there is literally no way to balance this – if you don’t have enough people, there is upset; if it is perceived that you have too many, there is upset. People always want more, but are desperately afraid of losing what they have. Equally at the point of trying to field 25-man raids you’re having to make genuine decisions about people versus warm bodies versus committment to the guild versus gear versus skill. I mean, are you going to piss off more people by having a raid but some wankers on board, or are you going to piss off more people by cancelling a raid due to lack of sign ups. It’s very much a cycle of damned if you do, damned if you don’t, and combine this with the lack of transparency in the system and a perceived promotion path that is less of a path than trap for Heffalumps and all you get are guild members living on the edge of a nervous breakdown, clinging desperately to raid spots and to roles, just in case they one day get benched, or asked to break out their healing OS, and never get unbenched or permitted to DPS ever again.
Hmmm, this is very gloomy, it’s possible my time in Cowslip Warren affected me more than I realised. Time to break out the Nihlistic doom rabbit poetry … Where are you going, stream? Far, far away … Beyond the heather, sliding away all night … Take me with you, stream, away in the starlight. Um, anyway. All I’m trying to say is that I couldn’t understand why people would react so badly to recruitment and the occasional benching in my previous guild; my time in Cowslip Warren has taught my precisely why people are twitchy about it. And obviously a guild with sensible and trusted leadership should be able to navigate the twitchiness but it really is a knife edge in balancing the needs and wants of the people in the guild with the needs and wants of the guild itself, since the priorities of the individual are rarely the priorities of the group.
Where do we go from here?
I, err, don’t actually have a destination in mind. But guilds can blatantly function on a model that differs from the one built into to game: I mean SAN is a proud pantocracy, and Gelvon’s guilds seem to work extremely successfully as Cults of Personality.
If I was feeling wildly experimental, I would perhaps suggest this for a Cataclysm project: a 10 man guild of literally 10 members. You wouldn’t have to worry about cliques because, err, you’d be one. Equally, with a guild so small you could, in fact, dispense with most of the usual power structures: no need for officers, no need really for a GL apart from the actual mechanical necessity of having one, but perhaps you could pass it round like the last After Eight mint to prevent anybody getting delusions of grandeur. And actually because you wouldn’t be playing The Impossible Balancing Act game, guild admin would be much reduced, since you wouldn’t have to worry about recruitment, and juggling the competing priorities of individuals within the guild.
Everybody would have a guaranteed raid spot, so there’d be no bench-related angst, and you wouldn’t have to have a person who had the specifically miserable job of telling people they couldn’t raid tonight. Of course, you’d have to pug a fair bit since being dependent on all ten people to show up would put far too much pressure on the individuals involved but, hey, as long as you can provide the spine of a raid, a decent degree of competence and a vent channel then you still control the raid. The necessity of pugging would counteract the gated community feel as well, and stop people turning into pug-allergic xenophobes who only want to interact with each other.
And the guild would be small enough to run as some kind of … I don’t know … republic or city-state, completely transparently, giving everyone an equal say in how the guild functioned. Of course it would have to be the right ten people, willing to work together and take joint responsibility for a guild.
But it’s not the maddest idea I’ve ever had. I did, after all, think of this on a day during which I’m also considering replacing all my sp gems with int gems. Well, since I am mainly raid-healing as disco on 25-mans it strikes me that the quantity of the bubbles is more important than the strength of the bubbles.
Hmmm…maybe I have gone nuts.
Actaully – this is exactly what my guild did in Wrath – after our attempt at doing it in 25s. We went to a 10 person roster, with no subs. We all agreed on a set schedule, and we rarely – if ever – pugged someone. When one person couldn’t make it, we’d reschedule. We managed to push to 11/12 HLK, a bunch of server firsts, and in the end finally just stopped due to the summer coming. Oh, and 2/10 moving, 3/10 jonsing for SC:2, and the rest playing Bad Company 2. We’ll be back (hopefully) with the same format in Cata.
It worked amazingly well. Nobody ever sat. There were no officers, no DKP, no anything.
adgamorix´s last blog ..Zerg!
That sounds amazing – perfect, in fact.
You lucky lucky bastard
Interestingly enough, I actually did the 10 man raiding guild with exactly 10 members a while back, around when ICC came out.
It worked really well, for about 3 weeks. Then cliques did form, of about 3-4 people, petty arguments going on between one clique and another. Then, someone wanted their friend in guild, just as a ’social’. Then the social wanted to raid. Then peopel stopped showing up, so we pugged, more and more.
About a month ago I disbanded the guild after running the previous 4 week “guild runs” with 3 guildies and 7 pugs.
My conclusions:
Real life will interfere, 10 people in a 10 man raiding guild is not enough, 11 is too many for everyone to remain happy.
Running a guild can suck the will to play out of you; appreciate the work that goes into keeping even the smallest raiding guild together, but don’t stay somewhere you aren’t happy.
Bugger, that’s really depressing
I’d kind of hoped it would be easier with fewer people, who were committed to the idea of working together as a group … gah.
I agree, my results were depressing. Although in reading some of your other commenters, it looks like you could have success, with the RIGHT ten people. Good luck if you do decide to give it a go!
We actually have a guild very close to what you mention. Eleven people, not ten, but two of them are very erratic and more than willing to sit out when there’s overflow. Everyone is an officer, and the only time our guild leader exercises any authority is on the extremely rare occasion that someone does something that breaks Blizzard’s ToS (no letting unknown friends use your account for harvesting, as one unhappy former guildie found out).
That means some raid nights we don’t have a full complement and scale back our plans, but there is excitement and a real sense of team cohesion to be had from downing Lady Deathwhisper with eight.
We started almost four years ago as a guild formed to avoid getting spammed with guild invites and if you’d told me then that we’d be raiding ICC I’d have said that you were high, but I couldn’t imagine a better group of people to play with.
I guess that’s a long-winded way of saying yes, it’s feasible and yes, it’s a huge amount of fun to play in a low-drama, high-cooperation guild.
That sounds fantastic – I mean, it wouldn’t have to be 10, it could be 11, or 13 or 9, as long as people were happy to sit out. Although in practice I find people are rarely happy to sit out, unless they actually have other commitments that prevent them raiding regularly.
Heh, which is a long-winded way of saying you lucky bastard
If WWAB ever went belly-up for whatever reason, I would very likely move to a 10-man only guild. The only problem I could see would be choosing which eight people would make up the rest of it after At and me. I think I would have to make altoholism a requirement for variety’s sake.
Hopefully I never have to worry about it, but perhaps there’s a chance I could spend some time deliberately shaping my Horde-side guild to fit that model. Hmmm….
Alas´s last blog ..Guest Post- Leesah and Max
Well, it seems like WWAB makes you pretty happy so it’s a moot point
Which is probably a good state of affairs, to be honest.
The guild I am currently in actually functions quite close to your clique-less, democratic society you describe, but it’s a rare makeup in that 90% of its members are real-life friends who’ve known each other for years. There are about 15 members, and only myself and two others don’t know each other in real life.
As a result, the guild atmosphere is completely relaxed and stress/drama-free. No one worries about secret alliances or being excluded from raids, because well…they are friends. There’s no loot rules, since we all just want to improve the guild’s overall effectiveness.
We take turns leading raids or being loot master, or posting events on the calendar, or being in charge of pugging a few randoms to fill holes. And if someone doesn’t show up for raid night, someone else just picks up the phone and calls them to see if something came up or if they just forgot.
There is a guild leader, but in title only. Everyone essentially acts as an officer, and making decisions like doing progression or trying Ruby Sanctum are always just open discussion decisions.
It’s really quite refreshing.
Granted, the drawback of such a makeup is that it would be easy for newcomers – such as myself and the other 2 strangers – to feel excluded. But all 3 of us only applied to join them after running with them as pugged raiders a few times – ie, after we had hung out with them on vent for a few hours and gotten to know them a bit. So while it took a few weeks to learn everyone’s names (everyone uses each other’s real names) and to give them time to know us, it wasn’t anything worse than say, moving to a new school and getting to know your fellow classmates.
I guess I’ve been fortunate (this is my second guild ever, the first was a familial, warm friendly one) because your stories about guilds wrought with fear, bitterness and suspicion seem so unthinkable. I can see why people would get burned out and sick of raiding in that sort of toxic environment.
Rades´s last blog ..Sindy DOWN- and some link love
God, I’m really jealous
But, yes, that’s exactly the sort of guild I’d aspire to, if I possibly could.
Either you got really lucky or I am generally really unlucky (and/or unacceptably picky) – but hopefully someday I’ll find something that fits, and in the meantime, a chance at raiding is good enough.
Guilds need 18 members to be stable, and this will always cause an issue somewhere unless, within those 18, 12 to 18 need to be of the “meh, i dont mind if i raid” mentality, but also “wouldn’t let you down if given the chance” mentality.
I could throw in some rarer qualities, but u get the idea :p
Joe´s last blog ..Guild Giggles and the Dreaded need to do something
I think “meh, I don’t mind if I raid” combined with “but I’ll never let you down” is a head-exploding combination
True, my head could do with some TLC :p
Joe´s last blog ..Guild Giggles and the Dreaded need to do something
I did that on a smaller scale once. A friend and I set up a team with the very idea that since we’re going to play 4-vs-4, we are going to have exactly 4 members, not more not less. It worked reasonably well and lasted roughly three years. Of course not with the same 4 people throughout (personally I left after two and a half and started playing MMORPGs instead), but our three most stable lineups played together for 6-8 months each. The premise is the people in question coming together and sincerely saying “we want to play on these days and these times, every week, and we will make sure to make it – unless something really important comes up, of course”. We also used to spend a week during the summer together, just to party and have fun.
The level of teamplay you can achieve, especially in a free-form low-reaction-time environment where instinctively knowing what the other will do makes the difference between a frag and a teamkill, is positively crazy. The problem is, of course, that you always end up having a “number 4″, the guy who needs to catch up a bit, and just when he’s finally there with his game, someone else will quit the game or turn into an asshole and you end up looking for a new number 4. So, recruitment is still there, just less frequent and more tense. Ultimately, the “rebuilding” can get to you.
Also, “number 4″ was usually the last one to join and would thus inadvertently find himself as an “outsider” to the “other 3″. If susceptible to emo-tendencies, there would additionally be the footsteps syndrome in play, where he’d idealise some former member he likely never even met but whose spot he’d formally be filling and go all “woe is me, you would have totally won this one if X was playing and not me, I am so garbage”, and you’d be caught in-between trying to give him constructive criticism on where he actually screwed up and reassuring him that “no, you’re fine, and besides there’s no point in drawing comparisons as X decided that playing with us interferes with his new life vision of getting pissed every night, so let’s not go there, ‘kay?”.
Ahem. I’m failing at making this a general example, huh? Anyway, the point is, yes, it can work, if every member is willing to accept responsibility for the whole. It’s also a reasonably adult-friendly scheme, as you minimise the “hanging around, just in case” factor. But it’s rather susceptible to the smallest deviations and fluctuations.
Rem´s last blog ..Divine Intention
One factor here is that is that the guild interface which Blizzard built into the game specifically supports an absolute ruler and offers no tools for transparency. The gchat channel is the only other mechanism they offer to help a guild communicate about itself. It’s no wonder that opaque power structures form by default. With these tools, it takes work and vision to create transparency.
Building a good guild culture takes effort and the talents needed to nurture one are not really those required for successful raiding. Guilds with good raid progression are attractive to unhappy raiders but no recruitment officer is going to mention the toxic culture — if he even knows one exists. That’s a bonus you get after you sign on.
Entirely agreed – I’ve never liked the notion of officerchat, either? I mean why have a chat channel that none of the rest of the guild can accesss? It encourages opaque power structures, and a general whispering-behind-backs atmosphere.
It’s a shame really that the two skillsets can’t be brought together more often…
I raided at the end of TBC and at the ‘beginning’ of WotLK in a guild that had 12 members. One who was permanently AWOL and one who had ongoing wife-aggro and was basically either AWOL or AFK. So the raid was… the 10 of us. When it worked (which it did for a long time) it was fan-bloody-tastic. Everyone knew everyone else’s ’style’ (by which I mean both game style and personality). There were no raid slotting issues: 2 tanks 2/3 healers and 5/6 DPS. Simples. Raid times and days were set in stone and everyone turned up. If there was a RL issue we yanked in a ‘friend’ to cover the slot or *gasp* we didn’t raid. Gear was never an issue, the person who it was the biggest upgrade for got it. Damn simple.
When it went wrong (which it eventually did) it was deeply nasty and VERY personal. All the tiny little things that you never mentioned came pouring out in a tirade of venom from most parties and the drama very incredibly intense. Leave-me-shaking-at-my-keyboard style intense.
So yeah… pros and cons huh?
Pilfkin´s last blog ..Plans- they are a-changin
God, yes, I imagine it’s fantastic until it goes wrong and then it’s the worst thing in the world. I mean, leaving my last guild was unpleasant enough, but I hate to imagine that in such a close-knit group of 10. Pros and cons indeed
yeah, guilds are tricky :/ partly due to having to figure out a common ground for some very different people who are basically strangers to each other, not to mention trying to assure that there’s no butting of heads and rubbing each other wrong (and the bigger the guild, the harder it is to manage)
If you’re lucky enough to have exact number of real life friends who play this same game and want the same things out of it – you’re golden and I envy you with great passion. Otherwise? its concession time.
Incidentally, I’m an officer in a guild. I log in once in a blue moon, I’m incredibly unhelpful, I refuse to get into vent half the time and yet GM promoted me. I feel like I’m living “Office Space” – the less useful I am and in your face about it, the further it gets me. O_O
Back when I was leading Now-Dead-Guild, there came a point when we started hemorrhaging members, specifically newer, but not brand new members and neither Nael nor I could figure out why. Careful asking around produced the reason: people were leaving because they were not getting promoted. I sort of goggled at that, because, honestly, I never took it as a matter of fact that I was going to get promoted in the guild ranks any farther than the guild’s “regular joe” rank.
We had a rank structure that was like “Have You Been Hacked” rank (no privileges, but a chance to explain before kicking) then Recruit, Member, Raider, Officer, Quartermaster (unlimited bank withdraws for the purpose of making order from chaos). It was my understanding that everyone begins as Recruit and eventually becomes Member, where they remain unless they start raiding and become Raider or we need to replace an officer. The Quartermaster was a regular officer with an authenticator who had extra bank privileges because it was a necessity. It was his specific role.
I can’t understand why people would leave the guild over something as silly as rank. You can’t have a guild that’s 3/4 officers and 1/4 members unless you have an “everyone’s an officer” structure. But that only works in very small guilds… I don’t expect to go to the poll and cast a black or white stone in an urn either.
Rhii´s last blog ..You Win It- You Wear It
“I can’t understand why people would leave the guild over something as silly as rank.”
Me either but it was a problem my guild had as well under a different GM. Since my guild is a social guild that raids (2 ICC teams with a third in the works)I solved the problem by making rank based on level with an extra rank at the top for long term members which grants them access to the locked tab. There may be a better way but the new promotion system is both fair, transparent, and solved the problem.
We tried having a veteran rank and allowing those members access to the last bank tab (which formerly was restricted to GMs – myself and Naelian – and our one Quartermaster Officer). This resulted in a series of vicious hackings, stripped naked toons and guildbank ransacks. We wound up turning that tab back to locked again within a matter of weeks after the fourth or fifth bank hijacking. Never again.
Rhii´s last blog ..You Win It- You Wear It
We haven’t had that problem as our previous GM was hacked and the guild disbanded. Every member either DLed the authenticator app or ordered an authenticator after that.
Our guild has, essentially, a “Recruit” rank for new players, an “Alt” rank for alts of members, a “Member” rank for every character that doesn’t fall into one of the other categories, an “Officer Alt” rank for Alts of officers – so that they can access the same tools, bank tabs, etc, as they can on their mains – an “Officer” rank, and the Guild Leader.
There is a relatively small group of Officers, that have shown themselves to be knowledgeable, friendly… ish…, willing to take time to help and do the tedious tasks that running a guild requires, willing to deal with any drama that develops, and mature enough to be the one to say, “that’s enough” when people push the rules. It wasn’t always that way. The officers were originally the entire group of real life friends who were instrumental in the start of the guild, or its reinvigoration at the end of BC/beginning of Wrath. When we started growing from a guild that could field 10-mans and had to semi-PUG with a sister guild to get 25-mans, we needed something that would give us better control over things like inviting new players and the guild bank, but we also wanted to keep our family-ish atmosphere. So a small number were chosen to stay officers and everybody else became a member. The recruit rank is kept for a few weeks to a month to let us get to know new players, and them to know us, and if they are comfortable with us and we are comfortable with them, then they get moved to member.
Since most of our players don’t want the responsibility of being an officer, it works. It’s not like being an officer gives you any special benefits. You get access to an extra tab in the guild bank (that holds mats an items we want to limit access to), but you can ask an officer for them and they’ll get it for you. (Assuming, of course, that you abide but whatever rules we have set out for such things. For example, we provide half the hard-to-get-mats for most things, such as Abyss Crystals, or we sell some things to guild members or raid members, like Primordial Saronites, which we sell at roughly 90% market price to people in the raid.) The officers are people that have proven they will abide by these rules, too. Members can schedule raids just like anybody else – participation will depend entirely on what else is going on at that time. If you schedule a 10-man ToC gearing raid at 9:00 Tuesday or Wednesday night… be prepared to be pugging your entire raid, the guild is running a 25-man then and everybody you want to come will tell you that’s where they are going.
I don’t really know what my purpose was in starting this reply. Our system works fairly well and while we’ve had a few folks leave over differences of opinion in guild and raid leadership, in general most people that would be unhappy with the way we do things never stay the time it takes to go from Recruit to Member.
Kaethir´s last blog ..I AM RENEWED!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. You have some very interesting questions and insights here!
I’ve heard people say of raiding that, “Raiders don’t quit raid groups. They quit raid leaders.” As a perpetual pug, this really rings true for me. I have very little experience of how guilds work outside of a raiding environment—for what I generally see (and hear) is how they behave when I’m filling in for a missing healer in an otherwise-all-guild run. From this viewpoint, it looks to me as if guilds form around raids, rather than raids forming out of guilds. The raid-leader doesn’t just run the raid, they set the whole tone for how the raid group, and therefore the guild, will function. Even when the raid leader is away, you can feel their presence in the way the raid runs and the way the guild behaves.
From what you’ve said here, it sounds like you’ve had a similar experience. Maybe it’s different for guilds who don’t raid at all? I’ve never really seen an insider’s view of, say, a non-raiding RP guild, so maybe it’s different there. However, I think guilds are pretty similar to group in the real world—most times there’s a small clique of people who Really Care about the goals of the group (or the guild), and a larger body of people who are Interested but whose commitment is somewhat less. Would guilds run more smoothly and suffer less attrition if they were run according to a Constitution that the members accepted by consensus? Maybe so. At the very least, my feeling is that it would help everyone find their place if the rights and responsibilities of the guild membership were written down.
Still in all, the reality of a guild is that there can be only one Guildmaster, and that person has—for better or for worse—absolute control over the guild’s resources. It seems to me that if you really want people to feel they are an essential part of a guild, the Guildmaster should be someone other than the de facto guild leader. Someone impartial, who doesn’t really have a personal stake in things, but who will agree to carry out the will of the guild by consensus. This seems impractical, but I imagine it would help. I think people would be a lot more willing to put down their roots if the guild leader couldn’t just /gkick them in a fit of pique one day. It’s funny, but I think the same is true for society.
Lara´s last blog ..No Good Excuse
I’ve led two different guilds. Both were moderately successful, and the first one is still running due to the format I established for it and choosing the right “number one” so to speak. Not leading one right now though, it takes too much work to maintain. Might get back into the business one day though because I have a very addictive personality. If I like something, and it’s bad for me, I’m in big freaking trouble.
I had a brief catastrophic fling with officership and it was not for me – so God knows how people manage GLing
Meh, to be quite honest Tam I think you need to lower your standards. You’re putting too much pressure on yourself and you seem afraid of commitment.
Ok does that sound like relationship advice?
PS. Serious about the lowering of standards. Everyone has their own point where they are comfortable but you’ll get nowhere without sacrificing some things.
Echo´s last blog ..The Hypocrisy of Gearscore and a Racist gets his Just Reward
Hey,I have no standards! These days, all I want is a guild that gives good raid, and I’m in one.
But it doesn’t stop me thinking about stuff, or dreaming of better things
Xrealm and faction change again, we’re in need of a healer
I think 18 is a lot for a 10-man raiding guild. We’ve got about 15 now, we’re getting 10-12 signups every evening, and we are understocked on healers. Ideally we’d have 13 people, who sign frequently and who don’t mind being sat out from time to time. At the moment, we’ve got 2 tanks, 2 healers (+1 infrequent, +1 offspec) and a fairly good mix of DPS. And it could still be better…
Oh, and I’m sure failshammy thinks we’re a clique of mean people because we don’t take him to raids. (But he’s baaaaaad…)
Jen´s last blog ..My take on the RealID Blizzard fail
Haha, if I faction change on more time I’ll … like … be very confused
I reckon I’m horde for life for ever, to be honest. I found life on the other side … interesting … but it’s nice to be in my own skin again.
18 is a lot – but basically you’ll need 10, 1 person will be working late, 2 people will be on holiday, 1 person will be having computer issues, 1 person will have something come up unexpectedly, somebody will be moving house and 1 person will have a wedding/birthday/funeral/aniversary … I mean that only really gives you a functional pool of 12.
Plus of course from a raid success standpoint, you’ll want to sit that resto shammy on LK to make sure you have one more dps and you HAVE to have a holy pally and disco priest to win. You also want 2 rogues or huntards for enraged adds, but don’t need the double for most fights. Then, on Festergut you want your shammy back for heroism. …. 18 is a decent number to ensure you have enough people online any given night and have a raid comp with a reasonable chance of success on certain difficult fights…. and a recipe for disaster.
Hinenuitepo´s last blog ..Forming a raid Redux x2
So, guilds are a lot like real life then? I know I’ve often looked at politicians and celebrities and also wondered why they are in the position they are in.
In my own guild I’ve never had a problem with the transparency of the power structure though. I mean, when our last guild leader quit, the new one was elected by simple majority vote on the forums. Similarly, officers tend to become officers because someone goes, “We need someone to help with organising raids and stuff, any volunteers?”
Shintar´s last blog ..The Battle for the Undercity revisited
Yes, things based on real life are invariably disastrous
I would hope transparency was the general principle, rather than the exception.
Of course perhaps interest makes a major difference to how much you care about transparency, I don’t give a damn how my current guild runs
Speaking as someone who always seems to be juggling this, I think 18 is too much for a ten-man guild. We drifted up to 17 active raiders at one time and it was bloated. Right now we’re sitting at a reasonable fourteen – three tanks, four healers, two DPS/healer hybrids, and five full-time DPSers. We’re probably recruiting an old friend who is a DPS/healer hybrid as well, but while we don’t really NEED another person right this instant – we’re always trying to plan for the future of school-is-back-in/I-just-had-a-kid/I-do-yoga-now-on-Thursdays sort of eventualities.
I’ll admit I like the idea of the leaderless guild democracy, but it’s something pretty tough to work out in practice. Our guild’s only real “drama” came from that, an officer promotion that one member didn’t like (hint: he thought it should have been him, which was funny) and he started stirring up the sort of backroom trouble like, “Well how are officers chosen anyhow?” and “The chosen person is so new to the guild, etcetera.” I thought the promotion was a no-brainer, and explained it to anybody who asked, very methodically: We wanted a healer representative, we couldn’t wait because at present the guild leader and raid leader are married and there’s one other officer…which is a bit too much powerbase, no one else was a good candidate, and the officer was already taking on extra responsibilities. People had no problem after that, and fortunately Mister Malcontent decided to leave. He was a bad seed, and everything’s been happy since then. We talk about issues that need everyone’s input.
This is getting long and rambly, but I guess I’m of the opinion that some few people need to take on the responsibility for dealing with logistics and crap. The “rank” of officer doesn’t really come with any privileges besides 1) we make the raid schedules, so we can tend to schedule ourselves for days that are good for us, but everyone can always set themselves unavailable or tentative for a day they can’t raid anyhow, and we strive for incredible, spread-sheet balanced sort of fairness with invites… Oh, and the second privilege is the opportunity to discuss any problems ad nauseum in a channel that’s a different colour. It’s not much, and I’m constantly amazed that people will do it. I try to be worthy of their trust in my exalted position. <– entirely self-deprecatory, I assure you.
Vidyala´s last blog ..Strict Stalemate
As far as the officer/GM clique thingy I’m avoiding that issue in part by having the officers run 5 mans with the members daily and I run 5 mans on my alts separately with different guildies. Additionally I’ve made it known the path to being an officer is this: Schedule events, run the events successfully, organize the guild vault. You’d be amazed at how few step up with those requirements. Too many want the title and the power but none of the responsibility.
“…often the question I find myself asking, when I watch the way power is wielded and authority imposed, is “why is that person an officer at all?””
Yeah, I inherited 3 of those. Got rid of one when I busted up their clique (gave the most drama prone member of it enough rope to hang himself with). The other two I can’t really demote without either losing our best and most active healer (nice guy too) or losing several people for demoting our longest term member (aka Mr. Helpful).
“But what I didn’t say is that there is literally no way to balance this – if you don’t have enough people, there is upset; if it is perceived that you have too many, there is upset.”
I solved that problem (sort of). Our “benched” players are actually in a different guild thats too small to raid. Additionally I friends listed every person we pugged that was both competent and polite (although several of those ended up joining our guild)so we have regular puggers that act as a reserve.
Hopefully the system I’ve duct taped together won’t fall apart anytime soon.
My guild actually is a leaderless democracy of sorts. The GM position is rotated bi-monthly, and all they really do is invite alts and demote people when they get hacked. It works fairly well, although I’m sure there have been issues I’m unaware of. We are quite small, with 25ish members – it wouldn’t work well with much more. We also all knew each other from in-game before the guild was formed, and haven’t had much in the way of new blood to muck things up.
The key really is – be an adult, and handle issues like you would handle them with RL friends. In your RL social circle there isn’t anyone “in charge”. There are people that tend to dominate the direction of the group, but it’s far more natural than “you’re an officer”. Personality do conflicts arise, but people are respectful and deal maturely.
Kaelynn´s last blog ..Power Auras- Resto Shaman Edition
That sounds fantastic, actually – I think perhaps a bunch of you knowing each other in RL life, if it doesn’t turn you into an invicible clique.
And, yes, a guild as a social circle is a much more healthy model, I think … for the right people.
Oh my I just had to stop and comment about Cancerboss before I read the end of the article!
Did you notice he now has his name in the opening credits of the new episode? We still don’t really get to see much about him/who he is… but at least he’s out there now.
There was an occasion early on when they were all in VoA and trying to pull threat from Cancerboss – I guess they had Trick and MD on DPS or something – and were unable to.
I guess he’s just one of those fantastic players that we all aspire to be like. There’s value in having someone like that in leadership.
As for the “he wants you to be better than you are” I can only imagine that Stoneybaby is getting a shit load of complaints about Cancerboss and the yelling and abuse. Stoney is just trying to justify Cancerboss’s behaviour because it comes from the *right* place or something.
I do my fair share of yelling at raiders (esp healers who stand still as a malleable goo flies right into their face) and it’s mostly because I’m trying to help. I do usually whisper to apologise to new recruits about it. But the rest of my guild are just kind of used to it/me by now.
Cassandri´s last blog ..Taking Control of Trade Chat
Yes I want more Big Crits context! I want more pre and post raid interviews, I want to know about their jobs and their lives and their guilds before Big Crits. Show me an interview with Stoneybaby’s wife!
And Tam, stick with the spellpower. What do you want intellect FOR?
Xeppe´s last blog ..For the Sexy Gnome – Haste and Spellpower
I find the critcast fills in some of the tantalising blanks, at least – but, yes, more context would be fantastic.
Basically with the 30% ICC buff there’s so much overhealing built into the system now that unless I’m tanking healing I don’t *need* spell power. And since, when I’m raid healing disc, I see my mana bar mainly as a progress bar (the aim is to empty it at about the time the fight ends) so more int would be more mana so I’d be able to *do* more bubbling. Essentially the sp lost would be minimal, and the mana gain noticeable. It’s probably a silly plan, to be honest, but I thought it might be worth the experiment…
Gossip alert: I was listening to the critcast over the weekend, and it turned out Cancerboss proved to be the dickhead we all suspected
He applied to join another guild, shat all over them on his app, and then lied to Stoney’s face about it. I don’t care how good a player he is, dude’s a complete tosser.
I understand there’s a value in having a really top class player in your raid group, but being able to play the game well and being able to lead other people through a raid are not necessarily an overlapping skillset. I also understand the value in yelling at your raid occasionally but I don’t see any value in generalised criticism – which is what the few clips of Cancerboss in action show him doing. He tends to castigate the raid for not getting it, and sucking, without actually contributing anything that would improve their performance – at least this is my ill-judged and arbitrary and, obviously, flawed take on the matter.
My new RL yells a fair bit, but he doesn’t yell “TAM STOP DOING IT WRONG” or “TAM STOP SUCKINg”, he yells “malleable goo, coming your way Tam” and even if I was moving anyway I swallow my pride about it and think, “well, what if I *wasn’t* moving.” Is pride worth wiping a raid over? No. He yells at me to bubble faster on DBS as well
Retrospectively, lots of people have said Cancerboss pushed them hard, possibly too hard – knowing how to far and how hard to push a raid is a really important skill. Stoneybaby can justify it all he likes but Cancerboss was simply not helpful – again, in my flawed and unimportant opinion.
Maybe I missed some things but I don’t get your evaluation of Cancerboss. Watching all of the clips its clear that you don’t get close to enough information to judge people’s input.
The only time we hear Cancerboss speak is in an early raid to call out someone for getting too many stacks of the debuff on sindragosa. In my opinion he does it in an incredibly proffessional manner and is in no way insulting.
In fact it is the person who he called out who I have no sympathy for. Rather than saying “yeah sorry my bad I won’t let it happen again” or even providing an excuse, he complains that Cancerboss dares to point out that he was doing something that was effectively ruining 24 other people’s fun.
If that one clip was typical of Cancerboss’s contribution to raids then frankly I think he makes an excellent choice for an officer in a 25man raiding guild aiming for hardmodes.
As I think I said in the post, my evaluation of Cancerboss was based on absolutely nothing at all – except ill-judged interpretation one reads into the gaps. My point was meant to be that because he’s largely behind the scenes and faceless, the reasoning behind his promotion to officer is quite opaque – which is pretty similar – in my opinion – to the way most guilds work. I mean, I genuinely have no insight into the dude, but I think one of the pleasures of watching reality TV is forming arbitrary opinions of people
My arbitrary take on Cancerboss was based not on his calling one guy for not dropping his stacks on Sindy (I agree the dude in question handled it badly but from the context it’s clearly that Crushadin is *also* picking him up on it – so, again, directed criticism like this is something that has to be *co-ordinated* – no wonder somebody is going to be defensive if a bunch of you start yelling at him) but his general unhelpfulness during raids, coupled with his facelessness. I mean, at least we get to see Saltycracker’s thought processes a bit, y’know? Basically there are 2 examples of Cancerboss being a dick I can manage off the top of my head:
One is during the wipes on BQL, when they keep fucking up the bite mechanic, he says something like: “can you please explain to me why you guys can’t wrap your head around this, can someone please explain this to me now”
And the second was on Sindy, when he says something like: “why is nobody doing anything they’re supposed to do guys.”
I hate people who pull that shit in raids – firstly, as a RL, or someone involved in raid leading, it is *your responsibility* to communicate strategy effectively, not to harangue people for not getting it. It’s the equivalent of a teacher standing before his class going “why are you getting cs in your GCSEs?”
Obviously there are *reasons* for people not getting shit but asking people to defend and justify themselves in that way is profoundly … well … stupid, quite frankly.
(I’d also note that when Stoney changed the strat, they one-shot her so it is generally wrong to assume mistakes are the *fault* of your raid, when sometimes a certain strategy is not working for you).
And, again, on Sindy – totally not helpful. Basically he attacks the raid from the inside. When things you wrong, the *team* takes responsibility for itself, you don’t get to stand outside the team, divorce yourself from the effort and say “the problem is you guys in general fucking up.”
Yes, you can target individual mistakes but generalisation blame-flinging is a waste of everybody’s time.
Anyway, he’s seperately proven himself an almighty tosser so I can now bitch about him with impugnity
He apparently applied to join another guild, shit all over them on the app, and then lied about it straight to Stoney’s face – so, err, no, not the kind of officer you want 
Add another voice to the chorus of my guild’s pretty similar to what you describe there at the end: We have 9 regular folks and the 10th slot is split about 50-20-30 among another 3. We are all RL friends/family and the running joke as we slooooowly got our roster up to even just the 8 to start Nax was that if we can’t throttle you in real life, we’d pass; the idea being there’d be less BS and drama if everyone knew each other personally. And it’s worked for us: we’ll have been doing our bi-weekly thing for a year come October. Progress-wise, it took us a month to finally quash rumors of good news, another month of our pathetic magic betraying us, and we’re coming up on 2 months of attempted regicide. So it’s been admittedly slow, but there’s definitely forward progress. (He will die and then I’ll have to convince the BF to change his warrior’s name to JLannister and all will be well!). Socially, we’re all still friends, no one’s throttled anyone else. In fact we visit far more often (if only on vent) than we would otherwise given we’re all split among three cities and wouldn’t see each other except for occasional holidays anyways. So our relationships are better off for it. So yeah. Not so crazy an idea and not so bad an outcome, least as far as my own experience has gone.
Re Big Crits: The so-far facelessness of Cancerboss makes me highly suspicious that in some future episode there’ll be a dramatic reveal that Cancerboss is actually a hyperintelligent fern that someone’s trained to play WoW. Mark my words!
Columbaspexit´s last blog ..Breaking Monotony
That sounds fantastic, to be honest – I’d rather slow progress with the right people than, errr, progress with a bunch of wankers. There’s probably little chance of me assembling 10 real life friends to play WoW with me – they’re all, y’know, sort of grown ups with proper grown up cultural interests and all that
WoW would be a good way to keep in touch with people when life takes you apart, however, so I’m a bit envious
I remember Chas had a few mates he used to play NWN nights, for similar reasons.
Ah, Big Crits gossip time: have you heard what happened with Cancerboss?! It was on the critcast – he was a complete dick to them, and fucked off to another guild, necessitating a forum post from Stoneybaby basically reading “Cancerboss broke my heart.” So he’s not a hyperintelligent fern, sadly
His facelessness was really weird, wasn’t it?
You mention that guild members strive to rank up within the guild, that there is no other achievement, within the guild, that one might want. I would have to disagree with that assumption. While there are perhaps one or two people who seem to express some interest in ranking up to officer (just because they think it’ll make them feel cooler about themselves, and make others think better of them), the vast majority of the members want no part of it.
We’re in a guild to raid, not to hop into a political rat race to the top where we can boss people around – people who are capable of behaving much like thankless, sugar loaded 5 year olds.
PS: Rotating guild leadership is awesome. It ought to be a rule or something.
I suppose making generalised assumptions is always pretty dangerous but in many of the guilds I’ve flitted through there’s been a feeling that if you stuck around long enough that you’d get promoted. Having had my brief stint of officerdom I know it’s a job nobody in their right mind would want, but I think there’s a sense of security and, perhraps, (misplaced) prestige about it.
Also, yes, although I agree that we’re in a guild to raid, often being an officer is the way to guarantee yourself a raidspot, with attendant perks etc, whereas a lowly member can be benched or passed over pretty much at whim.
And, yes, if I ever make a guild (unlikely), rotating guild leadership will be a must!
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Seriously. having standaards? Not wanting to be in a guild forever and ever with pricks, dicks and cocks and racists and rapists… You are a sad man that will never ever get anywhere in a game like wow, unless you start to get FUCKING REAL and play well with serious gamers!
(and I also heard you treat women as equals… sick fuck)
Woe is me. I am doomed.
Like a few people above we run a 10 man guild which has had little issues. We dont really have officers and everyone has an equal say if we change things. I got to be the GM only because someone had to do it and they voted for me to basically keep an eye on the guild bank access.
There are 13 of us raiding and people get rotated on a fair basis when we are at full strength (its a bit quiet now as a few are on summer break). So far we have got to 10/12 heroic ICC in 10 man which is not bad going for a two night a week guild (We would have got Sindy by now but summer break stopped progress for a bit).
13-14 is a good number for us on raiders as it mean people get to raid a fair bit and it covers for the usual real life issues that crop us.
Zetter
Zetter´s last blog ..A curse on all IT Killjoys
The thing is, I’ve found that most people don’t like to be rotated out *at all* and they get a bit twitchy and paranoid if they are, even though logically they know it’s okay. And I usually find 5+ raiders are likely to be caught up with RL stuff at any one time so I still maintain an ideal core – for sheer guild functionality – is actually around 15. But then, what do I know? I mean, whatever works for you, is obviously working for you
From reading your experiences all I can say is I’m so glad I’ve never experienced those things! (Then again, my guild is not a raiding guild, rather we are a guild that raids).
The thing is though, especially with raid guilds, the expectations of the individual members can be quite high. As such leading & running a guild like that can be really complicated (to do it well, that is), which might be an explanation for the dire circumstances you have encountered in those guilds you’ve tried so far.
It’s all down to guild leading. I have a small guild, we started with friends only but when we wanted to raid we started recruiting. We have about 13 people in the regular invite list plus around 10 more who just hang out in guildchat and play. We have an amazing time and it’s because I never recruit anyone I would’t sit and have a cup of coffee with. If you’re not a nice person, you’re out. We now do heroics (6/12) and we’re not no-lifers, just two raiding nights a week. Basically, all the problems you describe ever are down to guild leading. If a person knows how to manage a group of people their guild will look like a home; if he doesn’t and treats other guildmates as his personal loot bots, then you would get what you describe here. It is my top priority people would enjoy the game, and I resent your claim guilds are built to breakdown. Learn to identify the right guildleader and you wouldn’t have your problems.
*sigh* I didn’t say guilds are built to breakdown, I said the guild-structures hardcoded into the game if implemented heedlessly can lead to dysfunctional power structures. I mean, Single Abstract Noun is meant to be a leaderless structure but I’m constantly struggling against the hierarchy built into the game in order to implement it.
I’m sure your guild is a wonderful place; however you can’t blame guild problems solely on guild leaders. My last guild was also quite a nice place and members were recruited along the principles you describe here (I know because I recruited some of them) – but ultimately it still didn’t work for me. And some of that, yes, was down to Leadership and some of it was down to me: I wouldn’t, however, like to simplify the problems by pointing at my former GL and saying “hey, it didn’t work because you were a bad GL.”
Guild leaders are as human as anyone else: and they come in more flavours than Wonderful Person Who Never Makes A Mistake While Managing People And Makes His Or Her Guild A home and A Dickwad Who Treats Other Guildmates As Personal Loot Bots. There’s also Well Meaning But Incredibly Stressed. Or there’s Fucking Good At Admin Can’t Be Arsed With People. Or there’s Extremely Lovely But Lacks Bollocks. And so on.
Equally you can’t really identify whether someone is a GL who will suit you (I hesitate to use a binary good/bad here – I think it’s genuinely unhelpful) until you’ve actually joined their guild.
Interesting post, and as they say in “bureaucratic politics modeling”, where you stand is where you sit. So keep in mind where I sit, so to speak, is as a guild leader of a small guild.
Now that said – I think you raise some very very interesting points, and certainly have observed a number of things I have seen (and tried to come up with good solutions to) both in my own guild as well as in others. But there are two omissions that I think are pretty significant in the observations, that I’d like to add.
First – assuming that a 10m guild will have no cliques is, I believe, unlikely. People form groups. They always do – it’s human nature. Even in the smallest of units, people find a way to subdivide themselves into smaller units. If you have even three people, two of them will sooner or later form a unit and the third will feel left out. I wish things didn’t operate that way, but well…enough anthropological and sociological studies are out there that examine group dynamics to see the pattern fairly clearly. I’ve got some friends trying this “10 person only 10m guild” model out right now, and I will certainly let you know if I’m wrong and it works out. But truth be told, I don’t expect it will. It’ll be fine until the expansion, but then I imagine it will subdivide into “five people who run heroics together all the time” and the other five who aren’t included in that. People just – find a way to have “in groups” and “out groups”. I think the management problem is how to deal with with that intrinsic aspect of human nature – do you force the groups to break up as best you can? Work around it? This, I don’t have an answer to…I just don’t think having only 10 people for 10 raid slots gets around it.
The other thing that I think is overlooked is willingness to do the job. This is another issue that I’ve wrestled with for three years as a guild leader. Now – this is not the same as “give someone the job who doesn’t deserve it” by any stretch. I’ll say quite frankly, our problem right now is we don’t have enough officers to help manage all the work that needs doing administratively and I am completely and utterly overwhelmed. Now – it’s quite easy for people to say “This isn’t getting done”, or “That’s not the right way to handle it”, and they’re quite often correct. But finding people willing to step up to the plate and donate their time, energy, emotional resources, and patience to handle all the myriad tasks listed in the post above? That’s quite another story. The vast majority of players, they just want to play the game – to get their own personal happiness and satisfaction. They want the raids, the roleplaying, the ability to find groups to help in instances, and they want it all to come in a relatively drama-free environment so their playtime isn’t burdened with arguments, pettiness, immaturity, and the like. Guild leaders – we want these things too. For myself, there are times I wish I could just dump it all on someone else’s lap and say “Gratz, your problem now, I’m off to find somewhere I can just play and have fun!” But the hard reality is – in order for people to benefit from all of the things above, someone has to be the one willing to sacrifice those very same things to provide them. There are a LOT of bad officers out there, and bad guild leaders, who don’t and create really unpleasant environments. But for those who do, who try the best they can to be fair and reasonable and a good manager? Well – it’s a pretty thankless job.
I was a project manager in real life as well, and I bring a lot of those same skills to my “game” job. I remember the maxim of a project manager was: “If you’re doing your job well and good at it, nobody will ever appreciate or realize how hard you work because everything moves along so seamlessly and they never see the effort required to get that. If you don’t do your job well, everyone sees all the problems and immediately blames you. So – when you succeed nobody sees it or thanks you, and when you fail everyone blames you.” It’s very true, both for guild management and project management.
My challenge is always – how to get good officers? It’s a volunteer job, so we can’t pay them. I don’t give special perqs or rewards, so there’s no bonus or benefit in terms of favored raid slots or loot drops. (In fact, the only reason I’m not rotating my other officer in raids atm is because we have no other tanks to do the job in addition.) And the truth is – everyone I’ve approached the job with who was qualified has either tried it and said “Gah, too much work and I just want to have fun” (here or in previous guilds), or just is unwilling to take on the additional responsibility. It’s a great ideal, but I suspect in the end it’s a lot like world peace. We all want it, but nobody knows how to accomplish it effectively.
[...] Raid Leader, Guild Leader, Here are your Towels, Prepare to throw…. ** A quick note…Don’t read this. I mean – it’s okay and all – but for you TL:DR folks let me sum it up. ”Guild Leadership is Hard”. Now – that said. Head over to Righteous Orbs and read Tam’s article about guilds and guild pain. He’s way better at massive blocks of text than I am and he’ll make you laugh at the same time. Really – Go now – It’s Over HERE. [...]
[...] wish I could be like Tam and joke about my inability to find a place in a guild where I fit. Maybe in a few days. Right now [...]