/officerchat

Here is my most sage advice.  Don’t.

It’s easy to think that within the span of three days, you can find a core team of officers who will back you with what you need the most: a group of great, knowledgeable players.  At which point, of course, you will all hold hands and sing as bosses die and epics covered in cookies and twenty dollar bills rain from the sky.  It almost never works like that, which is why 99% of the guilds you see looking for charter signatures in the trade channel last, tops, a month.  The main mistake I see people making, is having a huge amount of false confidence in their abilities to run the show. Someone has to be the leader and it’s not a pretty job.

Running a guild takes an incredible amount of dedication, time, and money, in which every day a small piece of your sanity might die. There are no cookies, there are no twenty dollar bills, and you need to be the first one to step aside for loot and raid spots.  This is not to say that I think everyone else fails and I’m completely pro, but I’ve been around long enough to see what works and what doesn’t work.  So many places give the positive qualities which will make a guild succeed, so I’m going to be the negative nancy who will tell you why guilds fail (which is entirely more common).

1. The guild is started by someone with very limited knowledge of the game.

None of us were born knowing what’s what in WoW.  I am almost appalled at some of the things I have had my warrior running around in when I rolled my first toon.  I had no clue about class mechanics; People kept telling me I was the tank and I didn’t quite know what that meant, so I would just charge things and hit abilities as I had rage.  We all have a horror story about our first toons, but imagine being that toon and having ten other people coming to you for advice about their class and spec.

Not only do you have no idea, you don’t even know what a Wowwiki is.  This is not a great way to build confidence in your leadership abilities and sooner or later, people will bounce for a leader who can actually help them out.

2. The guild is started as a promotional/loot gathering tool for the GM.

If you’re having some trouble pugging and you really want 4/9/24 other people at your beck and call to kill things for you, starting a guild is not the answer.  A guild is a team effort and as soon as people get the idea that they are just around to gear you up while being entirely incidental, out the door they go.  As a personal note, I find someone who spends the entirety of a run talking about what loot they need from what boss to be a bore, and I have a sneaking suspicion I’m not alone there.

3. The guild is started by someone who has absolutely no desire to put in any work whatsoever and desires to still be rewarded.

Are you going to ask your new membership to donate to the bank to buy a guild tab while you throw in, say, five gold?  Will you continue to do your dailies while guild members ask for a run to pick up an enchanting formula they need to benefit the guild?  Are you going to raid with no vent server because you don’t want to pay for it? This makes you look like a jerk, not a leader.

4. The guild is people by mass recruiting anyone who walks by without a guild tag.

While I have seen these last for a while, especially if you are lucky enough to recruit five or six people who are friends, they fall apart for most directed issues.  If you are making a social guild, you have no idea what kind of people you have decided to throw together.  A twelve-year-old, a college student, and a nice grandmother are probably not going to make a deep connection… though anything is possible.  If you are creating a raiding guild, you have no idea about the skills, ability or role of your entire raiding base.  In fact, as the leader, you have no idea if you like or can get along with these people and they have no idea if they like you or want to listen to your direction either.

By all means, if you can get around these four points, start a guild and recruit your heart out.  Get five of your friends who are sick of guild hopping, divvy up the work and throw your hat into the ring as a team.  Though if you’re reading any of this and it has started to sound startlingly familiar to you, all you’re going to accomplish is losing the silver to buy the charter.

Best of luck on your guild leadership adventures, just be sure you’re beginning the journey for the right reasons.

**Solanum is a new featured writer here at /officerchat.  As the GM of Sheep Nova, residing on Farstriders, she brings a background of literature, leadership, and experience to the blog which will prove quite welcomed.  Be sure to leave a comment as well as a welcome!