--A few great leaders and one village idiot.
Oct 19 2009

Ask Sedge: Vol 5

advice

Tue, Oct 13, 2009

Hey Sedge,

Here’s one for you.  Recently my guild had a member return to the game after a few months on break.  He was a good member typically, helpful if not too talkative or generous.  Here’s where it went bad.  Apparently after a few BG’s (not guild pre-mades) where he had a losing streak, he felt it necessary to exclaim the deficiencies of the Alliance within /Trade chat.  Complete with profanities.  One of our officers happened to be in /Trade at the time and asked him to stop. Response was to the effect of, “You cant tell me how to behave.”  Discussion became heated and led to guild member removal.  Said member then logged on to an alt, told us all that he hoped we failed and how basically we were all chicken excrement.

For a little background, we are a mostly casual guild that does some raiding 1-2 nights a week as a guild, maybe every other week or so.  But many of our members raid much more frequently as PUGs.  We try to make sure that members of our guild are not “those” pugs, so that if someone needs a fill in they have no doubt that if they pick one of our members they will not be sorry.  (Skills may vary, but the attitude won’t).  We have a list of guild rules that prohibit flame wars within Guild Chat, but never thought to extend it to General or Trade.

Is it too much to ask of members to not troll in public channels as well?

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Sep 15 2009

Ask Sedge: Vol 4

advice“A case of Alt-itis?”

Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 1:56 PM

I’m in a 25 man raiding guild. Lately, most of our members just log on to raid. There are people on our non-raiding nights, but it’s mostly the same people, and maybe half of those people are happily playing alts. We can barely field any 10 man group outside of scheduled 25 man raid times.

I have nothing against alts, in fact, I’m guilty of mostly playing my alt as well, as it’s the character I enjoy playing most at the moment (I would switch if I could, but there’s no spot for my desired role, currently). I pretty much just log on to raid, do daily heroics and try to pug VoA on my raiding main. The rest of the time I’m farming heroics to gear up my alt. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with this, as there’s nothing else I can do to improve my raiding main outside of guild raids.

The problem is that I’m not the only one doing this, but not  every body’s main is as geared as they should be. We have people leveling alts when their mains can still use Conquest badge upgrades, or not doing the daily heroic for Triumph badges. The guild leadership (as well as myself, personally) would like to see these members spend more time improving their raiding mains outside of raids.

So I need advice on two things:
How can we increase the level of activity outside of official raid times? And how can we push people to go after upgrades for their raiding mains that they can get outside of guild raids (5 man ToC, Conquest badges, etc) without being too Draconian and basically telling people how to play? I should mention that I’m a former officer, so I also wonder if I’m providing a bad example by being on my alt most times.

Thanks
A concerned member

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Sep 4 2009

Ask Sedge: Vol 3

advice

(Today’s “Ask Sedge” is a post taken directly from Reztheweak.wordpress.com from a GM struggling with guild members crying out, “FAVORITES!!”)

Weds. , September 22nd, 2009 at 3:52 pm

I’ve mentioned before that my guild is ran by 3 people, Delinia, Dariar, and myself.  Dariar is on a break due to work and that leaves his wife, Delinia, very busy with IRL.  Leaving me in charge is not a good idea, that’s for sure.  I lead raids.  I yell at people.  I’m not so good on the social aspects of taking care of others.

Someone comes to me with a problem and I try to relate it to raiding.  That way it sounds profound (I hope) and not like I have no clue WTF they are talking about.  It isn’t often that I’m the cause of a problem (haha, who am I kidding?)

I logged in this morning and found out I had angered some people.  What what?

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Aug 16 2009

Ask Sedge: Vol 2

adviceFri, Aug 14, 2009 at 11:52 AM

I am a guild master of a progression guild, we started out as a 10-man Ulduar guild with a plan to get more members so we can do or at least pug a 25-man Ulduar consistently. Half a year later, we are still having trouble filling in a 10-man raid and sometimes 25. It seems that our biggest problem is raiders leaving the guild.  A number of members have left because they consider me too strict about attendance, responsibility, and competence when I ask them to show up to raids they say they would, not stand in fire, and do  their job as well as expected from their quality of gear. Is this unreasonable to expect from players?
There are players that I have kicked from my guild because they were rude or didn’t really care enough to attend raids that they said they would. These players have gone on to other guilds and have done extremely well, which leads me to the question:

Should I have been more accepting of these personalities so we could have success in raids?

Thank you,
Concerned GM
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Aug 10 2009

Ask Sedge: Vol 1

advice

Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 10:36 AM


Just over a month ago, the guild that I was an officer of had a bit of drama. Over a short span of time, the guild leader basically lost her mind, pissed a lot of people off, then left the game and deleted her characters.

We had a guild meeting to decide what we wanted to do: stay in the guild and elect a new leader (the GL had given leadership to one of her old friends), disband and find new guilds, or reform under a new guild name.

It was decided to do the former and I was elected as the new guild leader, to which I reluctantly accepted. You see, I really am not interested in leading a guild, but I want to see the guild succeed. We had many very good people that I really wouldn’t want to see split up. We were running Ulduar, at least 6 of the bosses. So it was a pretty decent guild, considering. I wanted to keep that going.

What advice can you give for a reluctant guild leader

-C.

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