With MMOs continuously giving us larger and expanded content, it is hard to form a skilled group of players who will show up and perform to set expectations.  Upper echelon guilds have taken years to build and mold their member-base to produce the efficiency that most can only dream of.  In the lands of world firsts, complete PvP destruction, or even wipeless runs, you will be required to find people who not only meet the game’s expectations, but also your own.  Eventually we may come to the conclusion that those in our guilds may not be able enough to complete such a task.  What if many of these short-skilled guilds came together to form a union though?  Could an alliance between multiple sovereign groups produce results and maintain a successful demeanor?  Perhaps.

Continue reading

Part 4:  Leapfroggers

One of the few joys of leading a guild is feeling that “rush” when everything goes right and you meet one of your goals.  The enthusiasm exuberated from your members provides a euphoria which surpasses just about anything else the game has to offer.  Whether it be downing that boss after weeks of attempts, finally stabalizing a core group of solid players, taking that PvP zone once and for all, obtaining that long sought after piece of gear, or simply reaching a certain member cap, meeting set goals greatly improves guild morale around the board.

What happens when during the midst of your celebration and rejoice, things take a huge step backward?  Unforseen events will always happen; You can’t predict them.  Let’s say that this event was conspired and planned beforehand?  A player swooped in, took advantage of your guild’s current needs to suit their own, and took off for greener pastures.  Say hello the the “Leapfrogger”, also occassionally known as a ‘Guild Jumper’.

Continue reading

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?

Continue reading

I’m sorry sir, but we’ve all taken a vote and have come to the conclusion that you are no longer in charge of this guild.  We are prepared to offer you a handful of options to ease this transition:

1. Promote a member of our choice to GM and play under his/her rule.
   
2. Simply quit the guild and leave it to us.
3. We’ll all quit out from under you and create a new guild (bringing all your members in the process)

We know you’ve worked hard on your guild, and we appreciate that.  Things simply are not working out to our liking, as we enjoy having things go our way.  Simply put, you aren’t in charge anymore.  We are.

Continue reading

(I’d like to start this out by apologizing for my silence. I’m in the middle of studying for a GRE subject test, so mostly I spend my days breathing into a paper bag. Once my tests are over, I should pick myself back up.)

Being tough is one of the best skills you can possibly learn as a GM and an officer. Some of my worst decisions came from my inability to say no. Check this for bad judgment.

-Allowing a player who stole from my guild bank back into the guild four times. To be fair, this was the preteen brother of one of the founding officers. I didn’t even throw him out after he cleaned the bank because his father, who is also a beloved member, grounded him. That’s got to suck enough, being grounded for your behavior on the internet. He rage quit a lot, after screaming that he hated us and I finally said no more. This took over two months. It was before I grew a spine.

-Allowing a player to blow up a drama bomb rather than just throw her out. This included her going absolutely ballistic in another guild’s vent. One my officers had benched her for no-showing six weeks of raids and she lost her mind.

Sometimes, you have to be a jerk.

Continue reading

“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

Continue reading

Guild Kicking our members is rarely something most leaders want to do.  We would all love a guild full of intellectual, skilled, and contributing players, but there are times when bad seeds get mixed into the bunch.  More often than not, these bad seeds have sewn friendships and/or loyalties with other members, thus creating a nightmare when it comes time for them to be removed.  How do we judge and carry out a justifiable guild kick?  How do we know when a kick is even warranted or in need?  No worries, all it takes is common sense, an iron fist, and a very large steel-toed boot.  So snuggle up, little grasshopper; We’re going to transform you into a guild kicking machine!

Continue reading

We’ve been focusing quite a lot on the ‘raiding guild’ for some time now.  How could we forget about those still holding the prideful flag of ‘leveling guild’?  With as many hardships as we’ve discussed with coordinating raids, distributing loot, and scheduling instances, it’s very easy to overlook the problems that you have (or had) when your main focus was retaining quality, loyal members and motivating them to keep leveling up.  Guild leadership is still leadership, whether you have 25+ players in Ulduar, or 100 players in Tanaris.

How do you find worthwhile members, and more importantly, what can you offer them to join your guild and stay loyal when your biggest achievement has been hitting level 60 and gaining your epic mount?  Leveling guilds carry just as many headaches as raiding guilds, all the while being extremely crucial to a guild’s future development.  Make sure you get it right the first time!

Continue reading

As a GM, one benefit of having friendships with your members is that you have a strong, positive relationship with each of them. You understand what motivates your guild, because you’ve learned about their real life issues, their interests, and their goals in life.  Members with a strong connection to yourself and the officers are more likely to put up with more nonsense, raid longer hours, and be loyal to the guild.  However, in order to be a good leader, you must be careful to distinctly define the boundaries between yourself and your players.  By portraying the “friend” role to an extreme, you may lose the authority to command leadership at all.  Here are some points to remember:

Continue reading

Saying that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar may be an awful, headache inducing cliche when it comes from Mom… but it’s also true. GLs and officers have to be adept at dealing with people, because they will have to do it on a large basis. Even my bank officer has members who come to him with raiding issues or personal issues, even though that’s not technically his “job.” You don’t get to decide that all your members must connect with and trust the “Personal Issues officer”, people are going to talk to the one in power who they feel the most comfortable with (and if everyone in your guild is only comfortable talking to one person, you need to first buy them a car for having the grace and patience to deal with that and then fix it, because that’s a bad sign).

I’ve found a few ways to make yourself significantly more attractive to the guild membership.

Continue reading

You are hustling out raids/heroics, and your members are repping your guild, fo shizzle.  Is your cred on the (Dalaran) streets really what you think it is?  You may think everything is pimpin’ & chill, but the rest of the server may be hating on your peeps.  For Real.

Your guild’s image to other players is an important feature that many leaders forget about.  It affects guild recruiting, crafting, morale, and the general attitude your members receive from the community you reside in.  What side-effects can this have upon your guild?  Why should you even bother to care?  It’s redonkulous, but you need to keep homeyly with those playas if you want to promote your guild to some srs bznz.

Continue reading

Would you consider yourself a registered nanny?  Do you enjoy whining, crying, and bickering?  Perhaps you have children of your own, and just LOVE it so much that your /gchat holds a special place in your heart due to resembling loud children.  Or maybe, and I know I’m going out on a limb here, just maybe, you’re ready to pull out your hair in large clumps while engaging a /gkick spree that would make even Luis Garavito jealous.

All in all, while you shoulder a long list of responsibilities to the guild, babysitting your members should not be one of them.  Hell, setting up raids and recruiting new members should not be either, but that’s another opinionated story of mine.  Some day we may see that post, but not today.  For now, we’ll focus on the rowdy daycare that has become of your former respectable, mild mannered guild.  Whether it be unchecked complaining in guild chat, or manipulation of your officers by the members who know what they can get away with, solutions are needed to curb and prevent such behavior from occurring.  I hope you brought your supply of pacifiers…

Continue reading